The Bank of Montreal this month launched BMO insights, a personal finance insights tool to help customers gain better control of their financial lives.

The feature will be rolled out to select Canadian customers throughout December, with the goal to make it available to all Canadian customers in early 2020.

The technology was developed by conversational AI company Personetics, which has developed insights tools for other large banks, including RBC‘s NOMI, U.S. Bank’s in-app personal finance insights tool and Wells Fargo‘s predictive insights capabilities. 

BMO explained that the insights capability will put customers in the driver’s seat of their financial lives.

“We are focused on finding ways to provide value for customers and evolving how they interact with their bank,” said Brett Pitts, chief digital officer at BMO Financial Group in a statement. “With BMO Insights, we’re tapping into the power of AI to deliver personalized insights to mobile banking customers and provide them with a holistic picture of their financial lives. This is a data-driven approach to personal finance that puts the customer in control.”

The tool runs on Personetics Engage software, which allows the machine-learning model to connect to the bank’s data to give each customer personalized insights via BMO’s mobile banking app.

When a BMO customer signs into their mobile banking app, they will be prompted with advisory notifications about their cash flow and savings potential. They will also be able to view their spending habits presented in categories; for example, it may present how much a customer spent at restaurants, travel or other categories.

See also: TD tests new AI-based app capabilities

“We are focused on finding ways to provide value for customers and evolving how they interact with their bank,” Brett Pitts, chief digital officer at BMO Financial Group, said in a statement. “With BMO Insights, we’re tapping into the power of AI to deliver personalized insights to mobile banking customers and provide them with a holistic picture of their financial lives. This is a data-driven approach to personal finance that puts the customer in control.”

Jody Bhagat, president of Americas at Personetics, said the BMO Insights tool not only gives customers advice on their personal finance habits, but it also offers rationales for the advice. When a customer opens their mobile banking app, they can see a teaser on what the insight will be about, and when the customer clicks on it, it will offer reasons why the advice was offered.

“It’s important for customers to not just contextualize but also have it be transparent why [the app] is providing this insight,” Bhagat said. “If we are showing customers that they may have an upcoming balance issue, [it will] provide them with the evidence as to why.” 

As the app learns more about the customer, it can offer tailored advice. Customers are also able to rate the information that they receive from BMO Insights; customer ratings teach the software what types of advice are most useful.

The insights tool also serves as a nudge to inform customers about BMO’s product offerings, including savings accounts.

“We see the customers across US and Canada have a relatively low savings rate — around 6%,”Bhagat explained. “Banks can help customers better save so one of the insights that BMO has identifies when a customer has enough money in their checking accounts to cover upcoming expenses and is capable of saving that money. ”

Other major banks in North America have invested in AI-supported personal finance insights for banking customers. For example, Bank of America’s Erica, offers customers have a holistic view of their personal finance and how it will help them reach financial goals. Meanwhile, TD Bank has begun to use what the bank calls “subtle AI” to comb through customers’ transaction history and offer personalized recommendations and predictions. 

“We’re solving a problem [for customers],” Imran Khan, TD’s vice president of digital customer experience told Bank Innovation. “We can serve the unique needs of every single customer versus having to divide customers into big broad buckets.”

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