Fintech
MoneyLion Doubles Down on AI to Improve Customer Experience
As the financial industry jumps into the use of generative AI, MoneyLion is looking to use AI to match consumers looking for financial services with financial product partners. The fintech is integrating AI to increase efficiency while ensuring data security and privacy.
MoneyLion’s open source technology allows it to present consumers with products from across the market.
The New York-based company aims to facilitate 25% of all financial product purchasing decisions through its platform within three years. If MoneyLion can achieve even a third of that vision, “this is going to be a very big business out there,” MoneyLion CEO Dee Choubey told Banking Dive.
Some of the new products that fintechs are developing and offering to their consumers are based on pre-populated identity graphs that analyze the consumer’s preferences and anticipate other products they might need.
The goal would be to increase the conversion rate of the MoneyLion network, which would benefit the supply side, or publishers that embed the platform on their websites, such as CNBC, Fortune and Forbes. It would also benefit the demand side, which buys leads, the executive said.
The fintech’s consumer arm plans to have a generative AI-powered search engine by the end of the summer.
Choubey said the service, which is in a broad beta phase and is powered by artificial intelligence, is proving to be a huge success.
Consumers can watch and “talk to their money” by asking questions about how much they spent on ride-sharing services in a given day, month or year, or they can analyze their paycheck activity through forms and widgets by connecting their banking transaction data.
“Machine learning is a way of life at MoneyLion,” Choubey said.
“In an open banking world, we really want to be the interface layer for MoneyLion,” he added.
Competing with business-to-business marketplaces, lead generators, publishers, neobanks and payment companies, MoneyLion is developing web services across the MoneyLion stack.
In February, MoneyLion Announces Partnership with EY US to leverage the integrated market infrastructure of financial technology by helping many small and medium-sized financial institutions offer more convenient features to their customers.
According to Choubey, small regional banks may not invest as much money in their user experience as large banks like JPMorgan Chase, but through partnerships like EY, MoneyLion’s platform helps customers get at least halfway to providing those types of user experiences.
The Seismic Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Fintech
Choubey noted that AI will transform the way consumers search for, identify and purchase financial products, providing personalized recommendations that would otherwise require hours of manual research.
When consumers connect their bank accounts to fintechs like MoneyLion and leverage those platforms’ network data, consumers with excess funds in their checking accounts can be offered appropriate credit cards or savings account recommendations. These “autonomous financial elements and modules” will likely be implemented within the next 12 months, powered by artificial intelligence, he added.
While still in its early stages, AI integration with personal devices and app-to-app communication is expected to enable interaction between savings, checking and credit accounts, Choubey said. This could help customers avoid late fees, ensure timely payments and consider alternative funding sources.
“It’s a pretty magical user experience, and I think AI is going to take it to the next level,” Choubey said. “There are a lot of fintechs that are already doing this. If they don’t, their business models will be negatively impacted.”
Challenges in using artificial intelligence
Building consumer trust in AI remains a challenge. However, Choubey believes it can be overcome by increasing transparency around data use, such as granting read-only access to bank account data, clear communication about how recommendations are generated, and explicit consumer consent for AI-driven actions.
“If you forget your password to a social media app, the consumer gets annoyed, but it’s a small inconvenience. But if we get the wrong information or activity with their money, it’s something that will lead to great consternation and great risk for everyone,” he said.
From a data security perspective, MoneyLion has multiple levels of user-generated and consumer-chosen data permissions. The fintech has also created several technologies to ensure that context windows are only for financial transactions and limit the scope of products that use built-in generation AI.
However, Choubey thinks that AI will augment human capabilities and that current roles, including call center agents and consultants, could evolve. Employees could be reassigned to more productive tasks or provide higher-level services, he said.
“I think it’s an exaggeration to say that jobs will be lost, but it understates the impact that this will have on growth,” Choubey said.