The rise of cognitive virtual agents in the banking world

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have been changing how people live, work, and play. From home security to healthcare to customer service, these technologies have the potential to improve the quality of our lives in a variety of ways. The advent of AI and ML solutions is giving rise to affective computing. Affective computing is emerging as a technology that has the ability to go beyond the cognitive tasks of an agent toward more complex human-like feelings and emotions.

One such example is creating cognitive virtual agents that can naturally interact with the customers and respond to their queries. Banks and other financial institutions aiming for financial inclusion are quick to embrace this new rising wave of these smart virtual agents. The goal of a cognitive virtual agent is to provide the best user experience to the customers by providing information at their fingertips, accurately identifying inquiries and requests made by customers, and interfacing in a way that’s familiar to today’s consumers.

According to Statista, the global market size of virtual agents is forecasted to reach around 1.25 billion U.S. dollars in 2025.

Areas where cognitive virtual agents can help banks

Fraud detection and prevention

Cognitive virtual agents can identify suspicious patterns in an individual’s internet behavior or call patterns that may indicate cases of fraud, enabling large-scale data analysis through unsupervised machine learning. By monitoring consumer behavior and their ability to detect patterns, these virtual agents can pinpoint cases and alert banks for additional investigation.

Customer onboarding

Cognitive virtual agents can be used to verify new customer identity by asking the right questions and cross-checking with publicly available information. This reduces reliance on physical documents and speeds up onboarding for both retail and corporate customers.

Customer support

Customer support is one of the key areas where cognitive virtual agents can help banks. These virtual agents can be programmed to answer common questions and help customers solve their problems quickly even after official working hours. They can also provide services in multiple languages, enabling banks to operate globally. Cognitive virtual agents are an effective way to increase customer engagement and customer retention.

The future of cognitive virtual agents in the banking industry

As machine learning and natural language generation become more refined, the cognitive abilities of these agents will grow even further. Over time, they will be able to learn from customer behavior and provide tailored advice. Using predictive analysis, these cognitive bots will be able to assist customers even in complex tasks including financial planning, assets allocation, and budgeting based on an individual’s needs and goals. With the ability to collect more information, these virtual assistants will enable banks to provide a hyper-personalized experience to their customers.

PureSoftware is one of the leading software products and development companies working in the domain of digital transformation. We have helped myriads of businesses achieve their digitization goals by creating customized and simplified solutions leveraging complex algorithms of AI and ML, especially in the banking, financial services, and insurance industry(BFSI). To know more about how to get customized cognitive virtual agent that can help you efficiently handle your customers, speak to our experts today.