As the financial industry jumps to employ generative artificial intelligence, MoneyLion seeks to use artificial intelligence to match consumers searching for financial services with financial product partners. The fintech is integrating AI to increase efficiency while ensuring security and data privacy.

MoneyLion’s open-source technology enables it to present products from across the marketplace to consumers. 

The New York-based company aims to facilitate 25% of all financial product purchasing decisions through its platform within three years. If MoneyLion could achieve even a third of that vision, “this is going to be a very important business that's out there,” MoneyLion CEO Dee Choubey told Banking Dive. 

Some of the new products the fintech is building and offering its consumers are based on a prefilled identity graphs that analyze a consumer's preferences and anticipate other products they might need.

The goal would be to increase the MoneyLion network's conversion rate, which would benefit the supply side or the publishers embedding the platform into their websites, like CNBC, Fortune, and Forbes. This would also benefit the demand side, which buys the leads, the executive said. 

The fintech's consumer business plans to have a generative AI-powered search engine by the end of summer.

Choubey said the service, available in a broad beta stage and using AI, is seeing great success.

Consumers can look at and “talk to their money” by asking questions about how much they spent on ride-share services on a particular day, month or year, or they can analyze activities related to their paycheck through modules and widgets by linking their own bank transaction data.

“Machine learning is a way of life at MoneyLion,” Choubey said.

“In a world of open banking, we want to be really the interface layer for MoneyLion,” he added.

Competing with business-to-business marketplaces, lead generators, publishers, neobanks, and payment companies for over a decade, MoneyLion is building out web services through the MoneyLion stack that is built on AI.

In February, MoneyLion announced its partnership with EY US to leverage the fintech’s embedded marketplace infrastructure by helping many smaller and mid-sized financial institutions offer more convenient capabilities to their customers.

Small regional banks may lack the monetary investment into their user experience like big banks such as JPMorgan Chase, but through partnerships like EY, MoneyLion’s platform helps clients reach at least halfway in providing these types of user experiences, according to Choubey.

‘Seismic impact’ of AI on fintechs

AI will transform the way consumers search for, identify and buy financial products by providing personalized recommendations that would otherwise require hours of manual search, Choubey noted. 

When consumer link their bank accounts to fintechs like MoneyLion and leverage those platforms’ network data, consumers with excess funds in checking accounts can be offered appropriate credit cards or recommendations on savings accounts. These “self-driving finance elements and modules”’ are likely to be implemented within the next 12 months, powered by AI, he added. 

Although still in early stages, integration of AI with personal devices and inter-app communication is expected to enable interaction between savings, checking and credit accounts, Choubey said. This could help customers avoid late fees, ensure timely payments, and consider alternative funding sources. 

“That is a pretty magical user experience and I think AI is going to take that to the next level,” Choubey said. “There are a lot of fintechs that are already doing it. If they're not going to do it, their business models will be impacted negatively.”

Challenges of using AI

Building consumer trust in AI remains a challenge, however. Choubey believes that can be overcome by increasing transparency around data usage, like giving read-only access to checking account data, clear communication on how recommendations are generated, and explicit consent from consumers for AI-driven actions. 

“If you forget your password to a social media app, the consumer is ticked off, but it's a mild inconvenience. But if we get any insights or activities wrong with their money, it's something that's going to lead to big consternation and big risks for everybody,” he said.

From a data security standpoint, MoneyLion has multiple layers of user-generated and consumer-elected data permissions. The fintech has also built numerous technologies to ensure context windows are only for financial transactions and limit the scope of products that use embedded gen AI.

However, Choubey thinks AI will augment human capabilities and that current roles, including call center agents and advisers, may evolve. Employees could be redeployed to more productive tasks or provide higher-level services, he said.

“I think it's overblown that jobs will be lost, but it's underestimated the growth impact that it will have,” Choubey said.