AR and VR can revolutionize the customer experience in the fintech sector

One of the things I love about my research is talking to organizations about how technology will change the way they do things in the future, and then working with my team to create proof-of-concept technology. We think about where technology is going and what it means for organizations right now.

In financial services, one of the most pressing issues is financial literacy. Financial literacy helps to increase the economy by making employees more productive and making it less intimidating to consider starting your own business. It also helps people make informed choices in their everyday lives when it comes to saving, investing, borrowing, spending and managing their income.

According to the CBI, 67% of adults in the UK are rated as financially literate (the UK ranks 15 out of the 29 OECD countries for financial literacy).

The banks have a role in developing these life skills for their customers. And technology also plays a role.

Some banks are doing very interesting things to teach people about money management. There is a bank in Hungary, my home country, that uses an app to teach kids the basics of managing money. It doesn’t use real money to do this, but a series of games teaches kids the basics of investing, saving and spending virtual money.

It is a very useful tool, and not just for children. Apps like this stop people from being afraid of money and help them understand things that affect us all, like inflation or higher interest rates. It helps to navigate financial risk. Most people learn about money by using the real thing. But technology can help people plan before spending real money. Some banks are introducing tools to use predictive technology to visualize potential returns on investments over a period of time, changing the environment to show, for example, the effect on savings of changing interest rates.

Once you’ve used gamification to teach the basics of finance, you can move up a level to teach people about investments or savings plans. Visualization helps people see the state of their money far better than a spreadsheet or linear bank statement.

A mobile application is a great approach to providing such services today, but if you want to take it a step further, you can introduce VR or AR to help customers plan different scenarios. It’s easier to view large documents and charts in a virtual environment where you can swipe through different options, compare returns from different investment types or see live predictions based on variable data inputs. You can do it with a real person from the bank talking you through these options, but without the infrastructure costs of using a bank branch.

From the bank’s side, you can make faster lending decisions if you help people to visualize, side by side, different options for, for example, a mortgage or a loan.

Of course, people don’t make serious investment decisions based on AI or a visualization tool alone. If you’re in the process of buying a house, you probably want to talk to a real person. But technology can be a first step, equipping you with the information you need to talk to a counselor. It helps with the research. Personally, I like talking to a chatbot or AI to get basic information before talking to a decision maker.

There are other interesting applications for VR and AR as well. A classic function that banks are starting to use is to visualize locations so that you can, for example, see which gas station nearby has an ATM.

Or log into a virtual banking portal, but instead of opening a new page to transfer money, you can open multiple windows in the AR/VR environment, see all your balances in one place, and drag and drop money between accounts.

This is about improving the user experience. And everything tells us that the user experience is moving towards VR and AR. Right now most people have a smart TV, but tomorrow most people will have AR/VR glasses at home too.

The technology is getting better and more accessible every day, and banks are starting to plan for it. The only limiting factor is the imagination.