BMO Launches New AI Tool CashTrack Insight

Need to Know

• The new tool, built in-house, helps BMO customers manage expenses by identifying upcoming cash shortfalls.
• CashTrack uses AI learning to look up to seven days in advance across Canadian chequing and savings accounts, and suggest actions that can be taken to avoid a shortfall.
• Insights will be made available to customers directly from the BMO mobile banking app.

Analysis

As Canadians continue to face unexpected financial hurdles due to COVID-19, BMO is helping customers manage expenses by creating a new AI tool for identifying upcoming cash shortfalls.

CashTrack Insight, which BMO announced this week, uses machine learning and AI technology to help identify when customers might be facing an upcoming cash shortfall. The tool is able to look up to seven days in advance, and analyses spending habits in both chequing and savings accounts to alert customers to an upcoming shortfall that may result in their being unable to manage expenses. Customers will receive insights from CashTrack directly within their BMO mobile banking app.

“We took the time to understand where customers were having challenges and found that close to a third face cash flow challenges each year. As we continue to navigate COVID, we know too that some Canadians are facing additional financial headwinds brought about by this pandemic,” Brett Pitts, chief digital officer at BMO said of the new tool.

“We wanted to come up with a way to help that was unique in the market. With CashTrack, we’re providing a more accurate, holistic view of a customer’s account—allowing them to take control of their finances. This is another step for us as we look for real ways to help our customers improve their finances.”

CashTrack Insights is fully integrated into BMO’s personal financial management tool, BMO Insights. Since its launch in 2019, BMO bankers receive roughly seven million insights per month via BMO Insights and engage with them nearly 50% of the time. BMO Insights is a collaboration between BMO and Personetics, a data-driven personalization solutions provider.

BMO has launched a number of new tools in recent months, as the bank responds to shifting consumer and business needs and concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In September, the bank launched bulk e-transfers for Canadian business clients, saving time and creating efficiencies for those clients at a time when quick payment-processing is a priority. The bank also recently launched a partnership with Intuit to allow clients to securely share data with third-party financial applications through Intuit’s secure API, and added new flexibility and greater visbility to its financial-planning tool, Wealthpath.