Hosted by Commonwealth Co-Founder & Executive Director Timothy Flacke, our new podcast highlights conversations between Commonwealth and tech leaders to discuss the implications of AI and other emerging technology on people earning low to moderate incomes, the financial services they use, and how technology can and should address their needs.
Our third episode features an interview with Karan Kashyap, co-founder and CEO of Posh AI, a Boston-based company building AI tools for banks and credit unions. Watch the podcast episode below or find it streaming from Apple Podcast or Google Podcasts.
Here are three ideas and excerpts from Tim and Karan’s conversation:
AI is access
A good example of that is someone who’s not working typical hours. Maybe they can’t get into a branch during normal branch hours. They can’t call a call center during normal call center operating hours. How do we extend the ability for a community financial institution to serve those members or customers at a time that works for them? That’s where AI gets interesting.”
AI can solve for multilingual financial services
Large language models [and] new innovations are really good at bringing multilingual capabilities. In the past, a lot of people that have tried to do multilingual and virtual assistant technology [and] just kind of relied on a service like Google Translate. So you basically build your assistant in English and you kind of use translators as an intermediary. The problem with things like Google Translate is that they’re not built for financial services, so certain things don’t get translated the right way. It’s [a] choppy translation from a financial services lens. Things like [large language models] are really interesting because you can actually train these models […] for a vertical or for financial services. And those multilingual capabilities tend to be a lot better than a service that is not built for the domain or for the vertical.”
Getting data on people living on LMI right starts with unifying customer data
I talk about the flywheel. […] You need to serve a certain population, to get data, [and then] you can then reuse [that data] to serve them better. If you’re not able to even penetrate certain demographics or certain types of populations, then it’s really difficult to have data. It is something that you can get better at by just trying to [serve] them better, even without the AI […] and just focus more on, ‘How do we bring banking services to more of these populations?’ […] That actually helps you to ultimately build models better. Just like unifying your customer data will help you build more personalized AI experiences better as well.”
Read more: AI on the minds of providers
Earlier this year, as part of our Emerging Tech for All initiative, Commonwealth published “Perspectives on Emerging Technologies and Inclusive Design: Interviewing Bank and Investing Platform Executives,” which contains summary findings from 16 interviews with industry experts and executives at financial service providers. The insights from that report included:
- Applications of consumer-facing AI are at the forefront of providers’ thinking on emerging technologies, with a particular focus on chatbots, recommendation engines, and financial automation.
- Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, is widely recognized as a potential game-changer for financial services, but providers are cautious about implementation and are considering internal applications as a starting point.
About Posh
At Posh, we believe in democratizing access to banking and empowering financial institutions with the benefits of AI. Posh offers AI solutions to allow financial institution contact centers and front lines to better serve their communities. Posh’s AI suite (spanning voice and digital channels) alleviates call volume and long wait times in favor of warm, conversational customer self-service while allowing for 24/7 access to banking services and lead-generation opportunities without compromising VIP customer service. Posh was founded in 2018 by Karan Kashyap and Matt McEachern, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Posh has raised $36M in financing from leading fintech VCs like Canapi, JAM FINTOP, Curql, and TruStage, as well as dozens of individual financial institutions that have invested directly into Posh.
This work is supported by JPMorgan Chase & Co. The views and opinions expressed in the report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of JPMorgan Chase & Co. or its affiliates