Chatbots, AI to empower fintech firms in 2018

As the year is drawing towards a close, an analysis of the performance of the fintech industry shows that it witnessed robust growth in 2017, in the backdrop of a technological revolution that included the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Chatbots, and machine learning.

Coupled with this was the strengthening of a number of startups in the segment, which succeeded in disbursing a large amount of loans to the MSME sector, primarily. Owing to this, fintech firms see 2018 as an opportunity to collaborate with banks to improve their lending capacity.

"This has been a great year for fintech in India. If we measure startups in terms of 'Fund Raise' and 'Business Traction', then fintech will get 10/10 on both counts," said co-founder and CEO Loantap, Satyam Kumar.

"2017 witnessed two major things. Fintech Players proved their massive potential to serve the under-served populations through their innovative acquisition and servicing models. And sensing the disruption being brought about by the fintech players, established financial institutions saw merit in collaborating with these players. In the coming year we should see more collaboration between banks and fintech players to improve the odds for everyone and dramatically improve user experience," added Sanjay Sharma- MD and CEO, Aye Finance.

Industry players also believe that the combination of AI and Machine Learning has helped chatbots take center stage, thus paving way for the concept of automated communication to be strengthened in the year to come.

"Fintech companies are now combing through loads of transaction data, for tailored financial advice and product recommendation. I anticipate, extensive use of chatbots as a medium in 2018 for addressing customer inquiries, issue resolutions and cross selling," opined Asish Mohapatra CEO and co-founder, OfBusiness.

2017 has also seen the rise of trade in cryptocurrencies; bitcoins, in particular. The popularity of blockchain technology will continue to soar in the years to come, the industry believes.

"Cryptocurrencies themselves have hit all new highs this year, which has further propagated their adoption by Fintech firms. Neobanks have started to adopt cryptocurrencies in a big way recently. Blockchain adoption has also increased dramatically with large incumbents such as main street banks now all utilising the technology. Overall, Fintech has grown leaps and bounds this year due to these innovative technologies," said Nitin Motwani, CEO and co-founder, BookMyForex.com.

With the impact of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetization fizzling out, the industry believes the Fintech sector will further gain momentum in the New Year.