FintekNews is pleased to offer our weekly feature column 3 Questions. Each week, we feature a thought leader within a unique sector of fintech and ask them to answer just 3 questions for our audience in their vernacular. This week, we’d like to introduce you to Michael Boukadakis, CEO of Enacomm, which provides interactive and intelligent customer self-service applications to a variety of industries including Prepaid/Cash Card, Financial, Health Care and Utilities. Utilizing web, mobile, SMS texts, email, voice and other communication technology channels.
NAME:
Michael BoukadakisTITLE:
CEOCOMPANY:
ENACOMMWEB ADDRESS:
www.enacomm.netWhat does your firm do/offer within the fintech sector?
ENACOMM is a fintech company that equips banks, credit unions and credit card companies with solutions for modernizing the customer experience (CX), fighting financial fraud and money laundering, and improving operational efficiency. ENACOMM’s intelligent products and services integrate data analytics to enable personalized, effective customer self-service and to detect and stop fraud attacks. ENACOMM is now bringing A.I.-based conversational banking to financial institutions of all sizes, nationwide, allowing bank customers and credit union members to use devices ranging from smartphones to digital assistants like the Amazon Alexa and the sound of their voice to conduct almost any financial transaction.
ENACOMM continuously builds and improves a comprehensive “omnichannel” experience for consumers with their financial institutions of choice. This means that one overarching system takes into account every customer interaction across all communications technology channels – from the web to mobile, SMS texts, email and voice – in order for the financial institution to respond most appropriately to customer outreach in real-time. ENACOMM has evolved in step with the emergence of additional customer contact channels – web 15 years ago, mobile seven years ago, and recently virtual personal assistants and visual IVR, which adds a visual interface with which the user interacts on his or her device to enhance the caller experience.
What area/s of fintech do you believe will grow the most in the coming 5 years?
During the next half-decade, fintech growth will be driven by innovations targeted at enhancing convenience and security. On the convenience front, conversational banking is already gaining momentum. This new contact channel, available through digital assistants such as the Amazon Alexa and Google Home, is making it easier than ever for bank customers and credit union members to engage with their financial institutions. Soon, the availability of conversational banking will extend beyond smart speakers, and will be used increasingly via software in a wider range of voice-enabled platforms, such as smart watches, televisions and automobiles. And perhaps the most dramatic advancement with this A.I.-powered voice banking will be a shift from two-way to multi-modal conversations. The modern consumer experience with conversational banking will allow users to direct actions to be taken, such as a document to be sent to them in real-time.
To enable the implementation of technologies that boost convenience in financial services, strong and reliable security measures must be in place. Biometrics are going to play a greater role in user authentication in the coming years, particularly because they can help make the use of new engagement layers seamless. As interaction technologies advance, a symbiotic relationship will continue to emerge: people will connect more often with their financial institutions, because financial institutions will be able to provide a better consumer experience due to understanding more about their customers and members because they engage more frequently.
What are the biggest problems facing the fintech industry in the future?
From a market standpoint, the greatest challenge facing the fintech industry is that the field is shrinking, not growing. There are fewer community financial institutions every year, due to reasons ranging from regulation to consolidation. Equipping community banks and credit unions with modern, “big-bank” technology will combat this problem by helping these smaller institutions win and retain customers and members to survive.
On the technology side, fraud is the biggest problem. The more ways that fintech gives bank customers and credit union members to connect with their financial institutions, the more access points that fraudsters have to infiltrate. White collar criminals are applying A.I. for ever-more sophisticated attacks, but luckily financial technologists are also using A.I. to detect and thwart these fraudulent attempts. Achieving total security will be a continually evolving pursuit in fintech.
As the founder and chief executive officer of ENACOMM, Michael Boukadakis drives ENACOMM’s leadership in customer multi-modal voice & data applications, including A.I. conversational banking, biometric authentication, next-generation CRM tools, and omni-channel fraud prevention technologies.