by Noriyuki Morimoto
According to the customer-centric approach promoted by the Financial Services Agency, before financial institutions offer products such as investment funds, they should know the customer’s “asset status, transaction experience, knowledge, and transaction objectives/needs.” But when financial institutions ask questions directly, they are unlikely to get correct answers. This is where robots come in. Based on the customer’s own input of “asset status, transaction experience, knowledge, and transaction objectives/needs,” the robot proposes the optimal combination of mutual funds.
I see two issues here. The first is the assumption that customers will open up to a robot but not a human employee of a financial institution. In other words, you might withhold information from a human at a financial institution because they might push you to buy products that are not in your best interest, whereas a robot is more reassuring because it does not talk or take action. While this is a realistic and accurate assumption, it is probably more important to ensure that humans are more trusted by customers than robots.
The second issue is that even if a robot can be customer-oriented, its customers are not real customers. The customers as understood by a robot are not living customers, but merely numerical attributes. If this is forgotten, a robot will become nothing more than a device that keeps financial institutions safe by ensuring suitability or reducing expenses.
In the first place, given that the sale of investment trusts should not be done in isolation from household finances, information on the customers’ real household finances should be more important than more technical aspects. However, household activities involve the accumulation of vast amounts of information, so the only way to utilize it is through technology. In short, the advancement of robots using so-called big data becomes necessary.
But no matter how advanced technology becomes, human relationships remain the fundamentals of commerce. Employees of financial institutions must be able to engage in meaningful discussions about economic activities with their human customers. It is through such dialogue that “asset status, transaction experience, knowledge, and transaction objectives/needs” are naturally shared, and the establishment of such relationships is the true essence of a customer-oriented business.
[Category /Deconstruction of Finance]
Chief Executive Officer, HC Asset Management Co.,Ltd. Noriyuki Morimoto founded HC Asset Management in November 2002. As a pioneer investment consultant in Japan, he established the investment consulting business of Watson Wyatt K.K. (now Willis Towers Watson) in 1990.