The Connector.
The Connector.
The Connector Podcast - DFS Digital Finance Summit - From Mobile Apps to Agentic AI: How In The Pocket is Shaping Financial Innovation
AI agents are set to transform financial services by taking over tasks people currently do while enabling entirely new services, creating both challenges and opportunities for established banks and fintechs alike.
• In The Pocket has evolved from a mobile app developer at the dawn of smartphones to a 200-person European digital product studio with a significant focus on AI strategy
• Financial institutions must decide how to approach "agent experience" as consumers increasingly interact with their services through AI assistants
• The speed of AI development means companies can't afford to wait and see, with hallucinations and high operational costs being the primary challenges
• Customer support represents the most promising immediate application for AI in financial services due to its text-based, repetitive nature
• Smaller fintechs currently have an advantage as they can manage the high costs of running sophisticated AI models across a smaller user base
• Well-structured data remains crucial for effective AI implementation, though future models may become better at working with unstructured information
For any questions about implementing AI and agents in your financial organization, reach out to In The Pocket's cross-disciplinary team that brings together design, technology, and strategy.
Thank you for tuning into our podcast about global trends in the FinTech industry.
Check out our podcast channel.
Learn more about The Connector.
Follow us on LinkedIn.
Cheers
Koen Vanderhoydonk
koen.vanderhoydonk@jointheconnector.com
#FinTech #RegTech #Scaleup #WealthTech
Welcome to the Connector podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting fintechs, banks and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Cohen van der Hooydonk as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another podcast from the Connector in collaboration with Fintech Belgium, and today I've got Peter with me. Peter from In the Pockets, a Belgium company, and you're head of strategy. So what is In the Pocket and what do you do?
Speaker 3:Yeah, good morning Koen. I'm a strategist at In the Pocket, so I basically help companies make decisions, make tough decisions. There's a lot of things coming at companies at the moment and they they sometimes need help to make those decisions, and that's that's what strategy is about is making smart decisions, knowing why you made those decisions and and moving forward I thought you were about to say tough decisions sometimes sometimes, yes, no, absolutely, it depends.
Speaker 3:There are some. Sometimes it's usually a combination of very easy decisions and tough decisions, short term and both long term, and things change quickly, quicker than they used to five years ago.
Speaker 3:So yeah, don't tell us right yeah hey, tell us a bit more about in the pocket so, um, we're a digital product studio at the moment, but we actually started out 15 years ago as a mobile development agency. Um, it was really the start of the mobile revolution, uh, first iphone got released, um, and, yeah, that was a huge, huge revolution. There Companies could finally make apps for phones, and so that's actually how we started. We started out with sometimes gimmicky things, like we made an Astrid Bryan soundboard, for example, and obviously in those 15 years, a lot changed. Now you know we work for really big organizations whose, uh, whose main product is actually a mobile application, um, but we moved far beyond mobile apps. It's actually only a small part of what we still do, so, actually, we do anything any digital product, cloud, backhand, but so also strategy. So, even if there is no specific product involved, we help organizations make decisions make sense.
Speaker 2:What actually struck me in your explanation is that you mentioned the beginning of iPhones. So what does that mean? Your company's in the in business for a long time yeah, so we're celebrating our 15th year. Wow, congratulations.
Speaker 3:We started as three people. Now we're over 200 across Europe, with studios in Bucharest, in Amsterdam and in Lisbon. So yeah, obviously a lot changed in that time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a large success story actually, and how long have you been with the company?
Speaker 3:I've been now at In the Pocket for five years, so within the strategy team, where we're looking at all different aspects of strategy business strategy, but also data strategy and lately also a lot of AI strategy, because obviously a lot of questions are about AI these days.
Speaker 3:I think it's one of the main evolutions that we've been seeing. We obviously had the mobile revolution, where a lot of changes came to companies. They had to rethink their products through that tiny device and obviously now they see all the possibilities of um, of ai also some threats, of course and um, and we need to figure out what, uh, what you can do as a company to adapt to it would you see, this is looking at the world to a different lens.
Speaker 2:Or is that too narrow to look that sort of or to take that as a view?
Speaker 3:no, I think it's. It's definitely a different lens, um, it's a different company, a different world where we live in, and also the speed of changes is increasing a lot, right? So you can't really sit this one out and say, okay, let's wait two years and we'll figure out what we're going to do then. That's too long right? So if you look at when JetGPT 3.5 got released, it's not that long ago and since then, I mean, we've seen a huge boom in terms of technology, and now also this year, I think, will be a really important year in terms of AI agents that will, especially in the financial market, start taking over a lot of tasks that people are currently doing, or extra tasks that are simply were not possible at the moment and will be possible through AI agents. And how do you?
Speaker 2:see like a product team like you are in the pockets, having a role in implementing agentic AI.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's an important question. So one interesting concept around this is that it's called agent experience. So if you've been in the design world, you know about user experience, right? So you, you think about the needs of a user, frustrations, and you try to basically take away all, all the friction to make the best possible, for example, smartphone app, and the same goes for agents, right? So people are already looking for financial information through chat assistants and this will only continue. So that's a really important question, I think, for financial organizations to ask at the moment, like, how will people interact with our products and services through an agent, through an assistant? And then you really need to think about okay, how do we offer our services? Do we include them, do we work together with them, or do we try to fight them with our own agent, for example? So I think those are a lot of questions that that financial institutions will need to ask now and you said earlier that you are different locations.
Speaker 2:Do you see a difference in terms of speed of adoption on the different locations that you mentioned?
Speaker 3:I think there are some local differences, like, for example, in the netherlands you have a few players like bunk that are really pushing the envelope, so obviously then banks in the netherlands you have a few players like bunk that are really pushing the envelope, so obviously then banks in the netherlands are trying to catch up quicker. In belgium, I would say we're a bit slower. I think people are most banks are still looking at one another to kind of see okay, who's, uh, who's going to be the first mover there. We obviously have kbc, that is um pushing a lot with their, with their kate product, um. But yeah, there are definitely some local differences and um, I think one thing of course is because it's such a global market is that we'll be able to adapt much quicker and whatever is happening in the us or in any other market, especially in Asia, things are moving fast. Usually we can pick up also much faster, especially from the technological point of view.
Speaker 2:Maybe a more sensitive question, because we're here in Europe and a lot of discussions nowadays about deregulation, so how do you look at regulation when we talk about AI?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so obviously it is extremely important. We also have the AI Act since last year, so we also help organizations to look at that and to really kind of figure out for themselves what is the best way to approach this. There are now more or less clear guidelines, and so you have a playing field in which you know, like, okay, we need to move within those boundaries. And it also helps you to make better strategic decisions because you know, yeah, moving in a certain direction can really set you apart from your competitors.
Speaker 2:Are there any success stories that you can share from In the Pocket and specifically on the more agentic AI level?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're currently working with a financial company to help them speed up their customer support. I think customer support will be definitely one of the first areas where we see a lot of quite successful agents. Simply because it's very text-based, it's quite repetitive, people have the same kind of questions over and over um.
Speaker 3:But it's really interesting there where, like, an agentic flow can have those small differences, like, for example, if people have multiple questions in a in a single ticket um, where a typical rule engine that we had before would kind of block on one of those questions. Obviously here, using large language models, we can really move forward. And one really important aspect there is where we try to stay very aware of how we combine human and artificial intelligence, because obviously the cost of being wrong can be quite high here. If your agent sends out a bad email or gives out the wrong information. You don't want that.
Speaker 2:Hallucination is not the right place.
Speaker 3:No, no, exactly. And I mean, if the user kind of understands that it's a hallucination, that would be one thing, but obviously it would be even more dangerous if they think that this is indeed the actual explanation. So that's what we're still working on keeping humans in the loop, making sure that their customers are served in the best way. But so far it's been really promising. It saves people a lot of time and it improves the quality of the service that people are getting, so that's really a win-win situation. What do you?
Speaker 2:see as the biggest tumble block for financial institutions to sort of take that step towards Argentic.
Speaker 3:AI. Yeah, definitely you need some good guardrails in place. There are, I think, at the moment two things. So first there is the whole hallucination thing the quality of the output you don't know. I mean, these models are non-deterministic. You don't know exactly in which situations they're going to fail, but you know that they might make mistakes. So that's one thing. The other part is the cost. At the moment, running these models, especially the, the, the state-of-the-art models, is still really expensive. So if you're a big organization with a few million of customers, those costs add up. So those two things will be resolved, I think, in the near future with better guardrails. Um yeah, simply more reliable models and obviously the price also will come down. But at the moment those two things are still a bit of a struggle for a lot of companies.
Speaker 2:No, and I think the level of change of LLMs it's a dazzling speed at the moment, right.
Speaker 3:It's very fast. But at the moment, what is really interesting is that it puts smaller fintech players with an advantage, because if you have millions of customers, running those kind of services is insanely costly. If you have a small user base you're really starting out now then the costs are manageable. So I think at this moment it's a really exciting time to be a fintech player where you look for a specific niche, you look how AI can really help deliver a great service and you can really outperform a bank a hundred times your size.
Speaker 2:Well, you mentioned Bunk earlier and I had the pleasure and joy to have Ali, head of data and AI of Bunk, in my panel last week in Zurich and I asked him the same question and he said for me it's all about data structure. So he brought it back to the very old saying rubbish in, rubbish out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, obviously that's where everything starts. It's also, I think, the part where companies can already start with experimenting. I mean, you need good data and, in general, like I, I have a double feeling about this, because I also think that those models will get better and better at sifting through data anyhow. So it may be a problem that solves itself eventually, but at the moment, of course, yeah, you have a lot of data points. It also brings in a lot of data security questions, because if you take in huge data sets, yeah, you need to be aware of what exactly went in.
Speaker 2:Your vulnerability goes up as well. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So that's definitely something. Yeah, some important questions that companies need to ask themselves.
Speaker 2:Well, interesting times. Our podcast has been going on and we're almost at the end of it, so can I ask a strategist to be a salesperson for 10 seconds and tell us who should contact you and where to find you as in the pocket?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think anybody that has a lot of questions about ai and agents should definitely contact me. We have a really nice team that is cross-disciplinary, which I think is really important. Ai is really a technology that requires people to bring together design, technology and strategy, so you need a party that can that can, really bring those together, and what's interesting for us is that obviously we can really go from an idea on a napkin to an actual product and we're also able to to build it and scale it. So that's I think that's quite unique.
Speaker 2:Well, Peter, thank you very much for sharing your story.
Speaker 3:You're welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you also very much to the audience and please stay tuned because more news from the world of fintech. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to another episode of the Connector podcast. To connect and keep up to date with all the latest, head over to wwwjointhekonnectorcom or hit subscribe via your podcast streaming platform.