The use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial services sector is rapidly increasing, the co-founder and CEO of Koodoo said.
Holding a talk on the acceleration of AI, Andrei Lebed, co-founder and CEO of fintech firm Koodoo, said the use of the technology was “accelerating” and “not slowing down”.
He added: “The opportunity in AI is nothing short of phenomenal,” and referred to examples of the technology giving a man the ability to speak again or improving the productivity of an engineering team.
Generative AI can create content such as text, audio and images.
Lebed warned that the quality of technology was improving and beginning to fool humans.
Lebed said: “While regulators are trying to work out who to regulate and how to regulate, it’s actually up to us, as leaders in the financial services industry in the UK, to be vigilant to the risks. Make sure we are aware about how we can protect our customers and our employees against some of those risks too.”
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He said this could pose a risk when it came to likeness checks.
Used to help verify consumers when seeking a financial product, Lebed said it was now “entirely possible to digitally inject generative AI” into cameras, meaning people could use deepfake images to verify an account.
He also raised concerns about people holding up words on a piece of paper as instructed when being asked to confirm their identity. Lebed gave examples of social media accounts where AI-generated people were holding up written signs to make themselves seem more realistic.
AI disrupting financial services
Lebed then spoke about the role of AI in mortgage advice, first asking why the use of price comparison websites had not disrupted the market in the same way they had other financial products such as car insurance and personal loans.
He said customer psychology meant people wanted to feel confident they were choosing the best deal, but price comparison websites did not reassure mortgage borrowers.
“When people go onto price comparison websites, customers don’t often get the opportunity to ask verifying questions that help them build that sense of confidence that they’re getting the best deal.
“Unsurprisingly, a lot of customers end up picking up the phone and speaking to a broker to get some reassurance that they are getting the best deal available to them,” he added.
He said if price comparison websites could capitalise on the reassurance customers needed before choosing a mortgage, the experience could be improved.
Lebed then demonstrated Koodoo’s AI agent, which was trained to pass CeMAP. He showed that the tool was able to answer questions a borrower may have about the best time to remortgage and give them an insight into interest rate trends and expectations.
It could also reassure a customer that they would still be able to get a mortgage even if they have some blips in their credit.
He said this interaction would make a customer feel more confident about the options available to them and ready for when the AI agent passes them on to an adviser to choose a product.
The Koodoo team then demonstrated its Koodoo Evaluate technology, which assesses the interactions its AI agent or an adviser has with a client to make sure they are compliant.
Ian Morris, product manager at Koodoo, said getting an insight into where advisers were falling short could help with employee training, while Jess Bateson, commercial and operations director of Koodoo, said addressing any concerns early in the process would lead to good customer outcomes.
Bringing it back to price comparison websites, Bateson said the evaluation tool’s aim to assess 100% of conversations meant it would give Koodoo advisers a “deep level of insight” on where additional training would be needed and customer behaviour that could inform its marketing strategy.