Financial services and technology vendors make for uneasy bedfellows. While tech has formed banking's bedrock since the Big Bang deregulation of the 1980s, in the last decade financial services (FS) organisations have seen the new "masters of the universe" steadily – almost stealthily – encroach on their patch. Established tech vendors and new start-ups have introduced a range of financial services from money transfer apps to mobile payments, crowdfunding to share trading and investments. These new services are perfectly suited to a generation who have grown up with smartphones and expect instant access to digital services, combined simplicity and a great user experience. While over the last few years there has been an exponential increase in the structured data that is collected and used, the inclusion of unstructured data sets, pictures, images and videos along with structured data has been increasingly important in driving both strategic and operational business decisions.

When the only option you have is to talk with a chatbot, you cringe when you have to engage with that awful robot that embarrassingly pretends to be human. While you'd love to be chatting with a human, resources are thin and we would all just rather have a better middle ground. Init.ai, the company that was born out of necessity is taking a different approach with chatbots with a smarter and less robotic way of engaging with customers. With a more advanced understanding of language, slang, and context, Init.ai is a glimpse into the future of chatbots. AlleyWatch chatted with cofounder Will Dawoodi about the startup and what companies really want from their chatbots.

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