Bank of Krungsri Ayudhya, commonly referred to as simply Krungsri in Thailand, has won the Most Effective Investment Service Offering category at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 for its retail customer focused Smart Advisor tool. This is designed for use on complicated mutual funds, and other investments, via the Krungsri Mobile application (KMA).
The idea of the tool is to personalize suggestions on investments under acceptable risk conditions for retail customers. Smart Advisor is a one-stop service mobile banking application, on the KMA platform, which provides a full range of investment services, spanning:
Advisory,
Asset allocation,
Transactions,
& Tracking, with instant notifications and data update capabilities. For instance, it is vital to respond quickly to market movements if the profile of a portfolio changes. Instant alerts are used to make clients aware when this happens and advise them on what to do to remain on target and in good shape.
Smart Advisor can compare existing portfolios against recommendations from the tool itself. For instance, a section displays a past performance benchmark v each investment strategy allowing the customer to better understand the characteristic return in that option. By understanding the risk better investors can re-balance and manage port more efficiently, so assets are allocated with purpose. For example, the model might suggest a single mutual fund or advise against it, depending on what the customer goal is: do they want to save tax, pursue high risky yields, or be more steady? Options are presented in a risk assessed manner.
Smart Advisor uses artificial (AI) and human intelligence disseminated via the channel, both out and in, to turn investing into a simple, secure task for the everyday customer. Key features include:
- Online risk assessment: this is defined as the “probability of occurrence of losses relative to the expected return of a customer on any investment” (see above). An in-built algorithm runs this check to classify the type of investor from both human and AI data sources to help the customer (and bank) mitigate risk appropriately.
- Investment advisory: Krungsri built Smart Advisor as a trusted financial advisor to make sure that clients understand the way to invest in mutual funds and other financial products. We only ever recommend investment v the customer type and provide as much detail as possible to inform choice.
- Wealth path: this function is the module that uses AI to forecast investment returns to help customers better understand the likelihood of each possible outcome. It helps users make responsible cognizant decisions about the level of risk, how long they might want to invest, and so on.
- Transactions: To be a one-stop service the bank has a function to track and submit funds recommended by Smart Advisor, after they’ve been through the advisory and risk processes previously described. This negates the need to visit a branch and get human advice and compliance.
Bank of Krungsri Ayudhya continues to expand the capabilities and scope of its Smart Advisor module on the KMA app. For instance, in October 2020, it collaborated with BlackRock, one of the world’s largest asset managers, to expand into being more of an international advisory service that combines the local Thai and Asian regional expertise of Krungsri with BlackRock’s global expertise and asset advice.
The success of the project is evident by the 80% uptick in subscriptions from Q1 this year vs Q1 last year. The number of accounts being opened via the mobile channel are also rising rapidly.