In the burgeoning world of the Internet of Things (IoT), smart technology, and artificial intelligence, we’re seeing huge, futuristic advances across the whole of commerce and industry that are revolutionizing the services around us. Among the leading technologies are virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), which are offering a number of ground-breaking solutions.
The finance industry is one of the biggest areas to use these technologies. Here we look at three key ways in which they are impacting the sector.
Breaking down big data through visualization
Big data offers huge potential to a number of industries, with the opportunity for more detailed analysis of patterns, trends, and associations than ever before. In finance, big data will help drive forward personalisation, security and key wealth management decisions.
There is, however, one slight problem. Big data is, well, rather big, and extracting and understanding all the information offers represents a huge challenge. This is where augmented reality comes in.
AR is allowing for the breakdown of big data into an accessible visualization process — holographic 3D models of data that users can easily interact with. Citibank’s ‘HoloLens’ workstation is a perfect example of what the future holds for big data manipulation in the industry.
The death of the bricks-and-mortar bank?
The world of ‘reality banking’ is on the horizon, with AR-powered services offering customers the chance to take on the bulk of their banking requirements from the comfort of their homes. Numerous banks are developing AR holographic environments where users can interact with a virtual bank teller and view graphic presentations of financial data that will encourage better financial management.
The technology is designed with enhancing customer relationships in mind, as well as improving overall business function. As we inevitably see the technology become more complete, questions around the future of the high street bank are bound to come to the fore.
A new form of stock portfolio management
As mentioned above, big data offers huge potential for better investment decisions. For those running stock portfolios, the prospect of the ‘virtual adviser’ is on the horizon.
Fidelity Labs collaborated with Amazon last year to demo ‘Cora’, a virtual financial advisor, designed to simplify, secure, and optimize portfolio trading. Wearing a VR headset, users can interact with Cora, who will offer data driven advice on portfolio performance, as well as buy and sell opportunities.
Whilst in its early stages of development, Cora represents a window into the future for stocks and investments for a broad user platform. There is now a bounty of ai products being released on the market that can provide a stock forecast, look at market trends, and much more!
There are plenty of other areas VR and AR are helping to change in the finance industry. VR payments, financial education, customer acquisition, and recruitment and training are just a few other examples of where technology is impacting the sector. With the above developments already in the process of arriving into the mainstream market, it’s set to be an exciting few years ahead for the new world of finance.