Exploring the adoption of Artificial Intelligence in the Finance Industry: The case of Chatbots in the Kenyan Finance Industry

Abstract

This study was a review of Chatbot AI technologies in the financial sector in Kenya which included Banks and Insurance organizations. A total of 42 Banks and 41 Insurance companies were reviewed firstly to confirm if chatbot technologies had been adopted in the organizations. The study was further elaborated by asking customers of the institutions that had deployed chatbots to review and provide feedback on their perceptions and opinions regarding them. This research was an extension of the recommendations for future studies by Araujo (2018), who provided input into how chatbots that were human-like were perceived by users. Since his research was in a controlled environment, there was a need to review the actual perceptions of customers towards chatbots. The result of the study showed that only 7% of Kenyan financial institutions in the study (which consisted of most Banks and Insurance Companies in the country) had chatbots. The study also showed that the majority of users and customers that interacted with chatbots had a positive experience. These conclusions confirm the study by Hertzfeld (2019) who found that 80% of consumers that were exposed to chatbots reported a positive experience. The low penetration of chatbot technologies in financial institutions in Kenya may indirectly be due to the findings by the same researcher that though perceptions of chatbots were positive, financial institution customers preferred interacting with human beings, therefore, causing low adoption (Hertzfeld, 2019). It is recommended that future studies review this assumption in detail.