Uses of machine learning in finance

If you wonder whether to implement AI and Machine Learning into your financial business or not, this is an article for you.

We will discuss here the advantages and disadvantages of this solution. Machine Learning is ideal for the financial service’s industry because there is always an enormous database to operate and the more data you have the better for you because due to that the AI can learn faster.

Yes, investing in Machine Learning requires some significant amount of money which often is a major concern but the payback is quick to be noticed. Here are some examples of what Machine Learning is capable of doing.

Automation of customer service

The use of Machine Learning saves your company’s energy, money and time. It can even replace regular employees by taking over the whole part of the company responsible for customer service. AI can answer e-mails and phone calls, and can also respond to requests via chat on a website. The program can teach itself to answer more and more accurately, and eventually become the master of customer service. Machine Learning can also provide the company with improved training for employees and even perform it.

But then, these solutions are obvious and do not regard only financial businesses. Well, when it comes specifically to the field of finance, AI has also a lot to offer. For example, it is very effective in detecting fraud, helping to make the best trading decisions and instantly predicting a level of credit risk.

Detecting fraud

It is sometimes hard to see small anomalies in the financial habits of customers and to be honest no one can monitor all their clients all the time. AI, on the other hand, can. It processes tons of information every second and detects those anomalies in an instance. What is more, it can not only detect but also immediately prevent fraud because of how fast and accurate it operates. Preventing fraud results in blocking suspicious operations, transactions, and accounts. Of course, if there is enough percent chance of them being abusive.

Processing information on credit risk

Automation of analyzing the solvency and credit risk of any customer benefits companies greatly. There is a really small chance of any mistake and there are no emotions involved in the process which unfortunately is essential in financial services. Generally speaking, AI protects your company from making bad financial decisions that can hurt your business. It considers many factors, some of which could seem irrelevant to a human being but all in all, make a great difference.

Analyzing the stock market

AI is capable of analyzing thousands of data all day and all night to track patterns and predict the state of the market. That is something that no human could ever achieve. Nevertheless, the results of those operations are very desirable. Every little change that has been predicted can save or earn lots of money within seconds.

Read more: https://addepto.com/finance/

AI: The next evolution of the personal touch

Artificial intelligence has gone from being a mystical concept on the periphery of technology to playing a pivotal role in the day to day, from big data processing to self-driving cars.

AI has also developed significantly since Alan Turing’s “Turing Test” evaluated a machine’s ability to behave like a human.

Sandra Schroeter, International Head, Customer Engagement Technologies, LogMeIn explains that with the popularity of AI on the rise, many organisations are evaluating how they can use it to drive the business forward. This can seem like an overwhelming task, but customer engagement could be the perfect door into the AI world. It enables the personal touch to extend across all technology platforms to enhance the brand experience and raise customer satisfaction. There are, however, some prominent misconceptions about AI that need to be discussed.

“Chatbots are best suited for simple customer support experiences”

This is a myth that stems from our past experiences as consumers. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) could be seen as the first generation of bots, specifically voice bots. IVR would collect information via phone and introduce a simple decision tree to help customers find the correct answers and put them through to the appropriate agent. This technology served a purpose, but it can’t be said it was pleasant to use.

The AI of today is far more dynamic and nimbler than the archaic technology it replaced. It can go much further than just sending a customer in the right direction. Consumers can now ask questions, get advice and understand options before making a purchase and hopefully avoid having to make any unwanted calls or visits to a store.

In the age of online shopping and ease of purchase and return, AI-powered chat solutions keep consumers digital, while delivering a personalised experience at scale.

“It’s better to focus on prospects than current customers”

A common but flawed assumption for a few key reasons. First, cost. Acquiring new customers costs, at minimum, five times more than the cost of retaining one, according to Forrester. Also, existing customers tend to spend more the next time they buy and become brand advocates. Therefore, keeping customers happy generates revenue.

Part of prioritising customers over prospects helps to create a more cohesive customer journey, ensuring that they experience the value of what they’ve paid for. A big part of the journey for current customers revolves around customer service and support throughout their customer lifetime. Luckily, there are many ways that AI can help to foster valuable customer relationships.

AI-powered engagement ensures each customer receives VIP treatment, is helped in the right way, and pointed to products,services and solutions that best match their needs. This encourages them to spend more, prompt them to share the brand with others and, ultimately, drive business success.

To become customers, however, they have to purchase something. Browsing and not buying is becoming more common and can become frustrating to organisations. While there is absolutely a time and place for follow-up emails and re-targeting ads, it can be beneficial to strike while the iron is hot.  AI enables personalised outreach to each customer on a site through data gathered about the customer’s journey and knowledge about past interactions that have converted to purchases. This proactive engagement will track back directly to the organisation’s bottom line and add more potential customer advocates to your ranks.

“Technology will completely replace humans”

Yes, technology is important. Contact centres, order management, and other customer-facing teams need to be armed with tools to optimise workflows, drive KPIs and ultimately make the organisation more successful, but technology has to be combined with human expertise. Tech helps to make employees more efficient and effective, but shouldn’t be used to completely replace them.

Just as on the consumer side, the expectation for technology to help make life better is rising among the next generation of customer-facing employees. Customer service and support are key areas where AI makes a real difference. AI-powered search and chatbots help to quickly scale by taking frequently asked questions off an agent’s plate. Modern chatbots deftly handle customer queries in a natural, conversational way, and free up the agent’s time to focus on resolving more complex, high-value customer issues.

AI is a game changer in this area if provided to employees at the right time and through the right platform. It enables employees to become much more strategic in nature and not only solve problems, but also drive revenue and loyalty.

“You only get one shot at the perfect AI implementation”

The possibilities of integrating AI with backend systems is nearly endless. A good AI chatbot solution can integrate data from any source that is accessible through an API, and it can have automated backend processes. However, while these use cases can deliver immense value to an organisation, it doesn’t all have to happen at once. Starting with a simple use case that shows ROI quickly and adding capabilities over time is a great way to get buy-in for bigger projects.

There are many benefits to starting small and growing an AI implementation with a single software solution. Siloed and disjointed experiences make customers feel as if they were working with a different company or brand with each interaction.

Coordinating efforts and insights across the organisation provides a more cohesive experience as users move through the customer journey.

Ultimately, the goal of using a single AI-powered engagement solution across the organisation ensures businesses deliver timely and relevant information to prospects and customers at the moments when they really need it. AI can also provide proactive guidance for agents of all capabilities, drive centralised approaches to knowledge management, and collect insights to help drive additional, ongoing training.

AI and bots can bring many benefits to an organisation, but there are ways to implement them in a methodical way. By defining specific use cases, outlining expectations, starting with a specific project and scaling, it will ensure that AI is an aid to customers and employees where and when they need it. Having the AI touch will be a game changer to the future of business.

Embracing AI: Where to start on your path to digital transformation

The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’(AI) evokes mixed reactions – from fear of the unknown to excitement about the possibilities this new technology has to offer.

Whatever your views on AI, the sooner you and your business start to embrace it, the sooner you will see where the positives lie and how to use it to improve business efficiency and drive innovation.It’s relevant for SMEs just as much as larger enterprises.

Amyn Jaffer, Head of Intelligent Automation, Ultima explains that many companies are, understandably, unsure of where to start when it comes to introducing AI. You may also be among those wondering what exactly AI means and how it could make a positive difference to your business.

AI can be defined as an area of computer science that emphasises the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. It’s a very broad term for a wide range of technologies and capabilities which can have a profound impact on organisations in any vertical. This broad scope often makes it hard to establish which aspects of AI are likely to suit any particular business or scenario, but starting with one of its simpler forms is the best approach.

The benefits of process automation

Intelligent Automation (IA) is the use of Robotic process automation (RPA) software with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that previously required humans to perform them. These tasks can include queries, calculations and maintenance of records and transactions.

As well as being relatively simple to implement, using software robots is both affordable and effective, making it an ideal place for any SME to startits path to digital transformation. And the potential benefits are impressive.

Take, for example, an HR department.Here, Intelligent Automation can be used for processing applications and absence management, as well as ensuring that each company department has the same information about each employee without the typical challenges of multiple system records.With these tasks managed in an automated manner, the HR team is free to focus on the more strategic aspects of their roles.

As another example, Intelligent Automation can be used to simplify the process of reporting on credit for thousands of customers. In one case, a retailer reduced reporting time by 91%, creating savings of more than £100k, by using a ‘virtual worker’ to produce credit reports.

Any large-scale activities or groups of repetitive tasks that draw on or feed information into multiple systems are also candidates for intelligent automation. In practice, this could mean using cognitive services such as text and sentiment analysis to process and respond to natural language text within formats such as emails, documents and live webchats. The aim is to extract data from these sources without the need for human intervention.

Contact centres are simplifying the service agent process by using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract key information from emails and messaging chats, allowing their agents to focus on providing the best experience for their customers. Similarly, speech recognition software can be used to answer the phone and respond automatically to customers as software robots are capable of analysing calls and finding the right information to help the caller. The robots gather the required information in milliseconds, making the service more efficient so that real people can deal with more challenging customer services issues.

Cognitive services can also be used to improve business efficiency through visual recognition. One company is using this technology to tag information in photographs – a task that would take hundreds of man-hours to do, but just seconds with cognitive services.

The next level: intelligent data analytics

With these processes in place, companies can move towards introducing more sophisticated AIto mine their data and start to ask questions of that data that will deliver unique business insights. By automatically collecting and sifting through vast amounts of data and then training robots to make sense of the data by asking the data pertinent questions, you can start to solve the problems that have been keeping you up at night. For example, analysing your customer data to establish insights into how different things affect your customers’ purchasing decisions can give real business benefits and drive innovations in how you supply and market your goods.

Ultimately, we’re all likely to have a ‘virtual worker’ by our sides helping us to do our jobs, cutting out mundane, repetitive tasks and freeing us up to be more creative and focus on business goals and innovation. To reach this stage the right foundations need to be in place,and the adoption of Intelligent Automation is the best place to start.

Not only is it simple to implement in many processes throughout most SMEs, software robots also provide positive, short-term ROI which is good for demonstrating to boards the tremendous potential of AI. We’re just at the beginning of the intelligent transformation journey- join in and make your company’s future bright.

Artificial intelligence & content writing: are writers going to be replaced?

At this point, it’s no longer necessary to explain what artificial intelligence and machine learning are.

Both these things are no longer just a technological advancement, they are also slowing becoming embedded into modern culture.

Artificial intelligence can be found in almost every camera-centric smartphone. The use of smart assistants (like Google Assistant or the extremely underrated Bixby) is slowly becoming more commonplace. And while one might argue that smart assistants are not true artificial intelligence (in which case, you’re correct), the fact remains that these smart assistants are laying the foundation for the use of AI in daily life.

But, as with all new technologies, disruptive ones at that, there are going to be some trade-offs to be made. The fact that people may be replaced by AI is a real scenario that’s apt to happen in the same manner that cars have forever replaced horse-drawn carriages as the primary mode of land transport. If you want a visual representation of what such a world might look like, look no further than a video game, Detroit: Become Human.

I mean, just look at this list for reference on jobs that are at risk of getting replaced by artificial intelligence.

We’re all for progress. And while it’s a painful truth, it’s one that needs to be accepted. AI is a disruptive technology and it’s the future. But what does that mean for the digital marketing industry—a market that depends heavily on content?

There are many aspects of digital marketing that are essential to its success. For example, guest posts can help your Google search rankings. Quality content that’s relevant to users is also apt to improve how your website ranks in Google’s search engine. 

For content to be relevant to readers, there has to be a human touch to it. See, what makes us humans unique among all Earthly organisms is that we are not only able to express emotions through art, we are able to evoke them. 

We, humans, are empathic creatures. The arts are an expression of that humanity. The experiences that we encounter as we proceed through life are what makes up our personalities. 

Artificial Intelligence simply cannot make such a connection with other people because arts like writing require a unique style and personality. To be able to emulate one simply isn’t possible with the current tech at our disposal. 

For reference, an AI that was meant to emulate a 13-year old Ukrainian boy was able to beat the Turing test (a test that determines whether an AI is capable of behaving in such a manner that it is mistaken as a human being), albeit, barely. The threshold for passing the Turing test is 30%. This particular AI managed to pass the Turing test with 33%.

For context, would a 13-year old Ukrainian boy be convincing enough to write something that holds your interest in what you’re reading? Maybe. But an AI that can only properly emulate 33% of what that Ukrainian boy would be like? Highly unlikely. 

So, to answer the question, no. Artificial Intelligence cannot replace good writers and a guest posting service. Not by a long shot. So, hire them. You’ll get your money’s worth whenever they churn out quality content for you.