Voice recognition and machine learning technology are combining to offer consumers new services across various industries; in financial services ING has invested $945 million in a digital technology initiative that plans to include voice automated banking services through devices such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home; Amazon Alexa is now working with many financial services clients for voice integration including UBS, LPL, Fidelity, Capital One and Betterment; this week it was also reported that Wal-Mart will partner with Google to offer customers voice directed ordering through Google Home on Google Express. Source
Banks are starting to adopt voice assistants through Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home but don’t foresee wide adoption in 2018; Patrick Kelly, assistant vice president of emerging technologies at USAA tells TearSheet, “What Amazon Echo and Google Home are going to be is yet to be determined. That persona drives the user expectations of those devices. We’ll see them start to evolve next year and see what users expect.”; banks are currently still in the early stages of understanding how the technology will be used in everyday banking; one of the main issues holding back wider adoption is security and authentication. Source.
Banks of all sizes and core provider FIS have begun testing Amazon’s Alexa service to complete voice commands in banking; instead of customers logging into their banking app they would simply ask Alexa for a balance or to transfer funds; skills, as they are referred to, are constantly being refined as confusion over pronunciation still occur with the technology only being widely used in recent years; it is still early days for this type of technology to be used in a sophisticated way but the industry is showing that they are willing to test innovative ideas. Source.
Financial firms like TD Ameritrade and Ritholtz Wealth Management have found early success in interacting with customers through Amazon’s Alexa...