guest editorial
By Srinivas Njay, Founder and CEO, interface.ai
Revenue growth is one of the top priorities and most significant stressors for the executives at financial institutions. Financial Institutions are finding it harder to stand out and to market solutions like credit cards, mortgages, and personal loans, which have been trusted revenue drivers for several years. Additionally, COVID-19 has added to the issue as many branches were forced to shut down, leading to a drop in in-person interactions.
With customers trying to purchase banking products like credit cards and mortgages online since the onset of the pandemic, financial institutions are experiencing significant drop-offs and instances of application abandonment. Over 40% of application abandonment instances result from simple actions such as an applicant not checking an agreement box or not having clarity about a question.
To make the applicant journey more seamless, reduce abandonment rates and improve revenues, financial institutions are incorporating solutions like smart conversion powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
What Is Smart Conversion?
AI has become increasingly popular over the years as it has been enabling financial institutions to enhance customer experience and make operations efficient. AI allows banking customers to be more self-sufficient, thus enabling customers to avoid working alongside a banker or call center representative to complete a simple task.
Smart conversion is the capability of an AI-powered assistant to provide banking customers a guided experience through applications that minimizes the chances of application abandonment.
Smart conversion achieves this through its AI co-browsing capability. In AI co-browsing, the AI assistant snaps on to the application form and provides proactive help in filling out the application form if it sees a customer slow down. Through smart conversion, applicants can also converse with the AI assistant to ask questions right at the moment of doubt. The application process is also streamlined with smart conversion for customers who already have a relationship with the FI. The tool can autofill information already available in the system, making the process very smooth and efficient for both customers and the financial institution.
Building Better Business Strategies With Smart Conversion
Due to the seamless experiences that can be enabled through smart conversion, application completion rates improve, and conversion rates increase by as much as 30%.
Additionally, these AI tools are available out of the box, can be seamlessly integrated and ready to go within a few weeks. Today, smart conversion is viewed by many financial institutions as a go-to solution to reduce dependency on staff, quickly provide high ROI and permanently solve application abandonment issues.
In a highly competitive market where financial institutions compete with each other fiercely on customer acquisition, tools like smart conversion offer the necessary edge to continuously grow.
Srinivas Njay is the founder and CEO of interface.ai. interface.ai provides an award-winning out-of-the-box Intelligent Virtual Assistant that acts as a "personal banking teller" to help customers 24/7 through every step of their journey from being a prospect to achieving financial wellness. interface.ai's Intelligent Virtual Assistants currently power several banks and credit unions across the world.