A new brief from Commonwealth, “Perspectives on Emerging Technologies and Inclusive Design: Interviewing Bank and Investing Platform Executives,” contains summary findings from 16 interviews with industry experts and executives at financial service providers.
The report’s findings suggest emerging technologies may provide an opportunity to support the growing interest from providers in building products to support people living on low to moderate incomes (LMI) and communities of color. Though we see more and more provider interest and action, more work is needed to ensure these efforts are effectively prioritized in product strategy, design, and road maps.
Other findings include:
- Applications of consumer-facing artificial intelligence (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 considering internal applications as a starting point.
- Some interest in the potential of blockchain remains, but use cases for retail banking remain unclear.
- There is an opportunity to make a business case for using emerging technologies to support the financial security of people living on LMI, but more data on the benefits to providers is needed.
The brief’s findings reaffirm the motivation for Commonwealth’s Emerging Tech for All initiative, which recognizes that emerging technologies provide a key opportunity to shift financial industry actors toward incorporating the needs of people living on LMI and communities of color into their design process.
Some of the ways emerging technology can be used to improve financial security include:
- Using variable communication styles to address a key barrier—user trust—in algorithmic recommendations and automation from financial service providers
- Building the kind of trust that may make customers living on LMI feel more comfortable discussing and receiving support for financial hardships; for instance, seeking assistance from a generative chatbot may be preferable to a human agent because people know they will not be judged for the challenges they are facing
- Helping people save time through automation and action-oriented chatbot support
- Assisting with financially significant processes that may fall outside traditional financial services, such as navigating public benefits and medical systems
Our prior research examining how people living on LMI engage with technology shows that they have more limited bank branch access, are more time-constrained, and have lower levels of trust with financial institutions. Emerging technologies provide an opportunity to address each of these barriers, filling the gap of the needs and wants of people living on LMI in innovative ways while balancing automation and control.
Following this brief, Commonwealth is conducting additional research along with recorded conversations with emerging technology experts to be published later this year. For related reading, Commonwealth’s Tech for Good Toolkit provides design guidance for financial institutions and other organizations that offer financial services to populations living on LMI using emerging technologies like conversational AI (chatbots) and automated financial management software.
If you are interested in working with Commonwealth to continue building this body of impactful research focused on emerging technologies, please reach out to info@buildcommonwealth.org to learn more.
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
