JPMorgan Chase Clients Can Now Get Stock Info From Alexa

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has announced a partnership with Amazon that allows its institutional clients to get stock information from Alexa.

According to news from Bloomberg, Alexa can now send analysts’ reports and answer any Wall Street-related questions. In addition, other features, such as providing prices on bonds or swaps, could be available in the near future.

Voice assistants are “clearly becoming something people are habituated to in their lives,” said David Hudson, global head of markets execution for JPMorgan Chase. “It’s about taking information that’s somewhere in the bank — that someone has to generally go and look for, or which is time-consuming or requires authentication to get — and [offering] that to you in another channel.”

A survey conducted last year by Bain & Co. found that 6 percent of U.S. respondents now use voice assistant technology to monitor their accounts, while 27 percent are open to using it.

So, it’s no surprise that financial institutions are finding ways to incorporate Alexa into their customer service offerings. Capital One Financial Corp. was the first bank to allow customers to use it to manage their credit card and bank accounts, expanding the service so people could ask Alexa for information, such as how much they spent on Amazon in a given week.

And New York Life is using Alexa to help its 12,000 agents, who later this year will be able to access details on policies and prepare for meetings, said Mark Madgett, who leads the insurer’s field force of agents.

“This is a very complicated business,” Madgett said. “When I started 32 years ago, I had five products that I could help solve problems with. Today, there are thousands of permutations around financial solutions.”

JPMorgan’s Alexa “skill” began last year as part of an internal competition to boost innovation. The hope was that if it were successful, the company’s salespeople wouldn’t have to waste so much time answering routine queries.

According to Hudson, Wall Street traders could soon use Alexa to execute trades — as long as client authentication and other security measures are taken care of to prevent fraud and false trading.

“In the open-office environment, if you leave an Alexa on your desk plugged into an Amazon account, you might find a TV delivered tomorrow as a practical joke,” said Hudson.