Virtual advisors will be the new face of banking

Banking operations are changing globally and Greece is no exception. Customer experience is increasingly digitalized across many platforms, with online banking becoming increasingly dominant.

As bank managers charged with implementing these changes told Kathimerini, everything is in flux, with new technologies and communications constantly being introduced and the emergence of a new, more intelligent world, based on artificial intelligence and connected networks and devices. 

Applications in the pipeline will be able to discern each customer’s individual needs and will propose products and solutions, without the presence of an adviser being necessary.

Greek banks have already announced the operation of such unmediated banking for select clients. These personalized offers of solutions and products are based on each client’s spending patterns.

In other words, these clients can be provided with a virtual financial adviser who can advise them on a wide range of financial management issues, such as, for example, their ability to secure a housing loan based on their credit rating, or any sort of purchase.

Those programs can also provide ideas about travel, based on algorithms that analyze the clients’ transaction patterns, provided, of course, that the clients grant permission for this. 

The virtual advisers can draw up an individual or family budget for any length of time desired – say, a year – and provide an implementation report and specific advising during the budget year.

This is not the future. It’s already a reality, albeit still limited, and virtual advising will continue to expand. 

This of course means that traditional banking is rapidly being lost to older generations.

They used to get their monthly pension via the postman, and give him a generous tip for it; now pensions are exclusively provided through ATMs, and we will soon move on to virtual money provided through digital networks, even alternative ones.

And not so long ago, parents had to send checks or wire money to their children when they were low on funds; now, this can be done with a few taps on a cellphone.

This means that in the not-too-distant future there will be no communication between actual bank employees and customers; virtual advisers will take over.