Knowledge Enhanced Financial Advisory Services

Ever-more complex financial products and investment opportunities demand that clients have a solid understanding of financial concepts if they are to make informed decisions. However, this is seldom the case, and the consequences of uninformed decision-making have been widely described in both the scientific literature as well as in public media. Interventions in the form of providing more documentation on products have been ineffective (Chater et al., 2010). The same seems to hold for efforts in schools to foster financial literacy, as it is (1) unclear what knowledge comprises effective decision help in an upcoming advisory encounter, and (2) there might be a very long time distance between the learning and theapplication in a real advisory encounter situation (Fernandes etal., 2014).In this dissertation, I therefore describe a way of client education that can be directly applied in the service encounter itself. The educational concept is based on experiential learning theory (Kolb, 1984)as a general framework, and is specifically rooted in open-ended learning environments (Hannafin, 1994)as well as the concept of micro-worlds (Rieber, 1992). Interactive, computer-based simulations are utilized to explain the relevant concepts at the time they are needed for making decisions. Embedded in a design science research framework, this dissertation contributes design rationales for both the technical systems required for this consumer education style as well as for the processes of how these tools can be embedded in the service encounter. In several consecutive build/evaluate cycles, design principles are instantiated and evaluated in realistic laboratory evaluations. Besides the focus on the educational aspects, light has also been shed on the social implications of introducing technology into these settings. This dissertation contributes insights on how technical systems, advisory processes, and the environment of an encounter must be designed in order to fulfill its purpose of transferring relevant knowledge without disturbing the critical social relationship between client and advisor. With our evaluations, we were able to demonstrate that client education with a significant client knowledge increase is possible directly in the encounter itself in a just-in-time and on-demand manner without disturbing the social relationship in any unacceptable way. Besides its contributions to the scientific knowledge base, this dissertation also seeks to aid practitioners in building the systems that will enhance the financial services of tomorrow

Facilitating Informed Decision-Making in Financial Service Encounters

While advice-giving encounters form an integral part of banks’ services, clients often buy inappropriate products and face financial consequences. Legislators have started to put banks under pressure to ensure that clients are properly educated. However, the literature describes barriers due to which client education is doomed to fail applying current advice-giving practices. Practicable alternatives to the predominant perfect agent style of advice-giving are dismissed, mainly with the argument of client-side cognitive limitations. This paper challenges this assumption by suggesting a decision-making process that seamlessly integrates educational interventions, thus supporting informed client decision-making. In the spirit of design science research, the authors take a fresh look at the problems of client education in cooperation with a large Swiss retail bank to derive generalizable requirements, and design a novel IT-supported advice-giving process. An evaluation demonstrates the design’s utility in significantly improving client learning, compared to traditional service encounters. This research extends the current discourse on service encounter design, and seeks to help practitioners to design the financial service encounters of tomorrow

Form Follows Function: Designing For Tensions Of Conversational Agents In Service Encounters

The proliferation of conversational agents (CAs) promises efficiency and quality improvements while enabling a more seamless integration of technology into service encounters. However, it remains unclear how CAs should be designed to provide the optimal experience for the key users: clients and frontline employees. Based on qualitative research with those key users, this study delivers a vision of an adaptable CA. It proposes a differentiated approach toward the design of CA: there is no one-size-fits-all design regarding the level of social presence, autonomy, or agency. The analysis reveals three tensions in user expectations leading to inconsistent design requirements for CAs. To resolve those tensions, CAs should be adapted to the changing context of a service encounter considering the appropriate level of autonomy, task complexity, interpersonal intimacy, and social role of the CA. The study contributes three design principles emphasizing the importance of the context for which a CA is designed

Why do you ask all those questions? Supporting client profiling in financial service encounters

Client data is key to provide personalized services and products. Therefore, banks go through great efforts to profile their clients during financial advisory service encounters. Since traditional pen-and-paper profiling does not satisfy the banks’ needs, they strive to digitalize this activity. This paper offers joint profiling as a solution: The advisor and the client jointly create a client’s profile using a shared display. However, test clients provided a mixed response to a first joint profiling prototype. They wondered, why the bank needs all this information. In a second iteration, joint profiling was augmented by task awareness, i.e., linking all profiled information to the client\u27s goal. This task aware joint profiling was far better accepted by the clients. This paper offers research insights on the role of profiling in face-to-face advisory service encounters, on its acceptance by the clients, and on design principles for digital profiling in financial service encounters

When a computer speaks institutional talk: Exploring challenges and potentials of virtual assistants in face-to-face advisory services

Advisory services are a highly sensitive form of collaboration: they rely on a clear distribution of roles between human participants who act according to an implicit set of practices and scripts. As such, they do not offer a specific role to a virtual assistant. At the same time, the technological improvements make the promise that institutional settings may be soon complemented with technology that allows for asking questions using natural speech, understands the context, and provides answers based on online processing of data. This article explores challenges and potentials of virtual assistants in advisory services while analyzing data from interviews and a workshop with clients and advisors from financial advisory services. It links the insights from the field with the institutional talk perspective. The findings unveil, that the concerns and hopes of potential users relate to their position and an implicit understanding of what an advisory service is about. This calls for careful and attentive design approach towards virtual assistants in advisory services

Secondary Mental Models: Introducing Conversational Agents in Financial Advisory Service Encounters

When introducing unfamiliar Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based systems, such as conversational agents (CAs), one needs to ensure that users interact with them according to their design. While past research has studied single-user environments, many practical settings involve multiple parties. This study addresses this gap and focuses on financial advisory service encounters and how mental models evolve in multi-party contexts. A multimodal interactive CA is developed and tested in financial consultations with 24 clients. The observations of these consultations and subsequent interviews provide insights into the challenges of using CAs in unfamiliar contexts. The clients have difficulties effectively using the system. This is linked to the institutional setting of financial advisory service encounters and a mismatch between the designer’s conceptual model and the client’s mental model, which we call secondary mental model

Computer education: new perspectives

Computer technologies were introduced into educational contexts over two decades ago and while there is some argument about the extent to which computers have realised their potential, they have undoubtedly had a significant impact on education. A look into any school will reveal computers being used widely by clerical staff, teachers and children. It is clear that computers are here to stay, but it is less clear as to how effectively they are being used in the learning process. Teachers not only need to use computers but they need to use them well, and in order to do this they must understand what computer technology can offer and the ways in which such technology can be used in teaching and learning

Exploring the Darkverse: A Multi-Perspective Analysis of the Negative Societal Impacts of the Metaverse

The Metaverse has the potential to form the next pervasive computing archetype that can transform many aspects of work and life at a societal level. Despite the many forecasted benefits from the metaverse, its negative outcomes have remained relatively unexplored with the majority of views grounded on logical thoughts derived from prior data points linked with similar technologies, somewhat lacking academic and expert perspective. This study responds to the dark side perspectives through informed and multifaceted narratives provided by invited leading academics and experts from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. The metaverse dark side perspectives covered include: technological and consumer vulnerability, privacy, and diminished reality, human–computer interface, identity theft, invasive advertising, misinformation, propaganda, phishing, financial crimes, terrorist activities, abuse, pornography, social inclusion, mental health, sexual harassment and metaverse-triggered unintended consequences. The paper concludes with a synthesis of common themes, formulating propositions, and presenting implications for practice and policy

Making Waves: Intra-actions with Educational Media at the National Film Board of Canada from 1960-2016

This dissertation aims to excavate the narrative of educational programming at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) from 1960 to 2016. The producers and creative staff of Studio G the epicentre of educational programming at the NFB for over thirty years produced extraordinarily diverse and innovative multimedia for the classroom. Multimedia is here understood as any media form that was not film, including filmstrips, slides, overhead projecturals, laserdiscs and CDs. To date, there have been no attempts to document the history of educational programming at the NFB generally, nor to situate the history of Studio G within that tradition. Over the course of five years, I have interviewed thirty-four NFB technicians, administrators, producers and directors in the service of creating a unique collective narrative tracing the development of educational media and programming at the NFB over the past fifty-six years and began to piece together an archive of work that has largely been forgotten. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that the forms of media engagement pioneered by Studio G and its descendants fostered a desire for, and eventually an expectation for specific media affordances, namely the ability to sequence or navigate media content, to pace ones progress through media, to access media on demand and to modify media content. As new waves of mediated practices emerge throughout the time-period here covered, the complex interconnections between media innovation and pedagogical practice are revealed to be deeply interwoven within the political, social and economic pressures of particular historical moments. The first of these waves focuses on the media produced by Studio G primarily during the tumultuous 1960s to the mid-1980s. The second wave (early-1980s to mid-1990s) marks the shifts in practices and social expectations with the rise of the PC computer. The third wave (mid-1990s to 2004) recognizes yet another shift as Internet technologies and the privileging of consumer expectation eclipsed what were by then seen as dated practices. In the fourth wave (2004 to 2016), the NFBs focus on interactivity is co-opted as a strategy of audience engagement in an ever-more competitive media landscape. The four affordances are realized to a greater and lesser degree in each of these waves. The narrative of the NFBs production of educational multimedia provides an ideal lens through which to identify and more deeply understand the nuanced and complex intra-action between technology, practice and society in which the interface is revealed to be far from neutral