CIBC is using AI-powered technology to offer customers personalized recommendations on their finances based on analysis of their transactions. The bank’s new feature, CIBC Insights, is embedded into its mobile app and was rolled out Wednesday.

The tech aims to help customers better manage their daily spending and savings habits by picking up trends and deviations in their transactions. The tool is integrated into the bank’s mobile app and shows a daily feed that offers users personalized tips and suggestions. For example, it may notify customers if they’ve spent more than usual on entertainment and ask if they’d like to set a spending limit. It will also note when a checking account holds extra money and offer to transfer it to savings, which users can do within the mobile app.

The tool acts as a pocket financial planner, according to Aayaz Pira, CIBC’s senior vice-president of digital banking and innovation.

“CIBC Insights is another example of the innovative technology and digital capabilities CIBC is building to deliver more interactive services and an even better banking experience for our clients,” Pira said in a statement. “The personalized financial guidance that CIBC Insights offers can help our clients manage their day-to-day finances — it’s like having a financial coach in your pocket.”

The $769.5 billion CIBC partnered with Lehi, Utah-based MX Technologies to create the tool, which, helps users build a budget over time, rather than overwhelm them with too many financial decisions at once, said Greg Slade, product general manager at MX, which offers solutions in data analytics and management, API management, mobile banking apps, and personal finance management. The company has raised $505 million in five funding rounds since its March 2010 founding, according to Crunchbase.

Slade told Bank Automation News that MX cleans then categorizes bank data using a flexible, cloud-based architecture and machine learning in an AI layer to run an analysis on CIBC customer transaction data. Some of the more straightforward recommendations made are rules-based, although, for more complex situations and trends, the machine learning tool makes the recommendations. CIBC Insights also uses APIs to transfer the data between the layers and to the mobile app.

“You’ve got to go in there and actually make meaning of lots of very large, long strings of meaningless data to an end user,” Slade said. “Then the other trick is not just cleansing it, but categorizing it and putting some context around the data so that it’s in a consumable format that we can then surface in an experience to the end user,” he added.

“The way we’ve architected the technology is it allows us to make very, very quick changes or enhancements to the product, which is typically very difficult for FIs to do themselves, whilst guaranteeing, obviously, an incredibly high uptime,” Slade said.

CIBC Insights is part of a growing trend for banks to offer financial services education to consumers. RBC’s digital assistant NOMI has seen an uptick in the use of its Find & Save tool, which offers a similar function.

CIBC has already rolled the updated mobile app out to its customer base. And while the Toronto-based bank, which has U.S. headquarters in Chicago, declined to say how many customers have downloaded the new app as of Wednesday, MX said “tens of thousands” are already using it.

MX has already received positive reviews from customers about the offering.

“We can see from feedback, the amount of stress reduced in people’s lives, especially in situations like we’re living in right now,” Slade said. “It makes a significant difference to people’s lives and the stress and the pressures.”