The US lender is using a form of interacting with clients that researchers see expanding, into fields including wealth management.

The “chatbot” revolution, which is one of the themes of the digitalisation of wealth management in Asia, sees Citigroup roll out a service on the Facebook Messenger channel for all consumer banking customers.

The Citi bot SG, developed in Singapore, is being launched after 600 Citigroup clients and staff tested it, the US banking group said in a statement. This publication has asked Citi over whether this service, or a variation of it, will be available to private banking clients, and may update this report in due course. 

The service makes its debut in Singapore and will be launched in other Citigroup markets around the world, the lender said. 

The chatbot addresses account-specific enquiries such as checking of account balances and transactions, providing credit card bill summaries, rewards and points balances and answering frequently asked questions. The chatbot uses natural language processing, which Citigroup said gives clients a convenient and intuitive way to handle every-day questions.

A report last June by MyPrivateBanking Research, the Switzerland-based firm, identified the most popular “chat” facilities used by wealth management firms. The study, titled Digital Wealth Management in Asia: Focus on China and India, analysed the strengths and weaknesses of the digital wealth management of the ten largest wealth managers in China and India. It focuses on firms' offerings to their high net worth clients and how these compare to market’s needs and expectations.

In China, it was found that 80 per cent of wealth managers use WeChat, which is seen as the most important digital channel. Chatbots are used by four out of ten wealth managers, all of which are local players, and chatbots are intergrated into their WeChat accounts, website and/or mobile application. Also, the report found that universal banks focus on their retail client sector more than private client when it comes to technological innovation.

Also last June, OCBC, parent of Bank of Singapore, had introduced a chatbot to answer employees’ HR queries.