How AI is Revolutionizing Financial Services: From Robo-Advisors to Personalized Customer Experiences

The financial sector is accelerating its digital transformation by leveraging AI (artificial intelligence). As AI technology becomes more deeply integrated into financial products and platforms, customer convenience has significantly improved. Clients of securities firms and asset management companies can now make swift and accurate investment decisions using enhanced mobile apps and dedicated website features powered by AI. The insurance, credit card, and mutual finance industries are also actively adopting AI for business expansion and risk management, utilizing it as both a "sword and shield."

Additionally, financial companies are pioneering new markets by maximizing their expertise in specialized areas. As they seek future growth opportunities, traditional boundaries between customer bases—such as individuals vs. corporations, large enterprises vs. startups, and domestic vs. global—are collapsing, driving disruptive innovation.

Asset Management & Securities: Elevating Customer Convenience with AI

Mirae Asset Global Investments is expanding its presence among domestic and international clients through AI innovation. In April of last year, it became the first comprehensive asset management company in South Korea to launch a dedicated robo-advisor service for retirement pensions, "M-ROBO." This AI-based pension management solution analyzes investors' age, risk profile, and target returns to automatically design customized portfolios and rebalance assets based on market conditions. It stands out by automating not just advisory services but also actual investment decision-making.

Mirae Asset has also integrated AI into public funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds). The "Mirae Asset Rational AI Global Momentum Mixed Asset Investment Trust," established in January 2020, is South Korea’s largest AI-driven public fund, achieving an average annual return of over 10% since inception. The "TIGER AI Korea Growth Active ETF," South Korea’s first AI-powered active ETF, outperformed the KOSPI by over 30 percentage points.

In 2023, Mirae Asset acquired Australia’s robo-advisor specialist "Stockspot," followed by establishing a U.S.-based AI subsidiary, "Wealthspot," in 2024. Last year, Wealthspot collaborated with U.S. ETF manager "Global X US" to launch the "Global X Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (GXIG)," an AI-driven bond ETF. Industry experts suggest AI-based bond ETFs could become a new growth driver.

Samsung Asset Management has gained attention for "FunETF," an AI-powered ETF information portal that significantly enhances investment convenience. The portal allows users to search all domestic ETF and fund products, including KODEX ETFs, with filter searches combining criteria like ETF type, returns, and trading volume. It also supports simultaneous comparison and analysis of up to five ETFs.

In December of last year, Samsung Asset Management introduced "PortRabbit," a monthly dividend portfolio service. It automatically suggests optimized asset allocations tailored to account types such as pension savings, ISA (Individual Savings Account), and IRP (Individual Retirement Pension).

Korea Investment Management has built the "ACE ETF" framework, covering the entire AI industry. Its flagship product, "ACE Global Semiconductor TOP4 Plus," focuses on investments in SK Hynix, NVIDIA, TSMC, and ASML, achieving a cumulative return exceeding 500% since listing. This aligns with the expanding investment focus on semiconductors, data centers, and power infrastructure driven by the AI revolution.

Shinhan Securities is innovating personalized asset management through its "AI PB (Private Banker)" service. The AI PB feature in the Shinhan SOL Securities app acts as a personal investment assistant, curating and summarizing market information and news based on users’ holdings and interests.

Insurance & Card Services Transformed by AI

AI is also enhancing user experiences in the insurance and credit card sectors. Beyond improving internal workflows, financial institutions are now leveraging AI to expand customer touchpoints.

Samsung Life Insurance introduced a generative AI-based writing system to fundamentally improve the quality of customer communications. By inputting key keywords, the system generates natural-sounding drafts for customer guidance, simplifying financial jargon into everyday language and replacing Sino-Korean or foreign terms with native equivalents to boost customer understanding.

Samsung Life Insurance also implemented an "AI Speech Consistency Analysis" service. Its proprietary AI voice analysis engine detects speech patterns, intonation, and vocal characteristics to preemptively prevent financial fraud.

Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance expanded its index-based coverage for flight delays and cancellations in overseas travel insurance to include return and connecting flights. This index-based approach, which pays a fixed amount if predefined criteria are met, skips complex damage assessment processes and is seen as a future-proof insurance model for AI-driven automatic payouts.

Mirae Asset Life Insurance provides AI-based health management services through the "Healthcare AI" feature in its mobile app "M-LIFE." By linking medical records and health check-up data, it predicts major disease risks and offers personalized health management recommendations.

DB Insurance is deploying AI robo-tellers in its customer engagement compensation system. Developed in collaboration with Samsung SDS, the system provides initial guidance within 30 minutes of receiving a car accident report.

Financial institutions are accelerating customer service improvements through digital transformation. Samsung Card, alongside affiliates Samsung Life Insurance, Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, and Samsung Securities, unveiled the revamped "New Monimo," a unified financial platform app under Samsung Financial Networks. Two years and four months after its launch, Monimo has attracted 10 million users and now offers enhanced personalized features.

Lotte Card introduced "Discovery," a curated service in its app "Digiroca" that leverages Lotte Group’s vast retail data. It provides personalized recommendations across categories like travel, pets, golf, education, and home styling. The service integrates AI deep learning and machine learning models to analyze customers’ card payment data, Lotte Members’ category preference indices, and Lotte Department Store brand usage information.

The National Credit Union Federation of Korea operates the "iMoA Account" via its mobile app "OnBank," allowing parents to manage their children’s financial activities remotely. The federation is also strengthening its risk management framework through early warning systems and real-time monitoring powered by digital technology and AI.

Disruptive Innovation for Future Growth

Meanwhile, financial companies are exploring diverse future growth opportunities. Samsung Securities has pioneered asset management services for corporations and their employees, including stock compensation programs.

Through its corporate financial service "AT WORK," Samsung Securities has attracted a large number of corporate clients. The service’s core feature is managing companies’ stock compensation programs, including stock grants, restricted stock units (RSUs), and employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs). Targeting businesses that wanted to retain talent with stock incentives but hesitated due to administrative burdens, the number of employees using the service surpassed 100,000 by the end of last month, with over 400 corporate contracts secured.

Korea Investment Financial Group is connecting domestic startups with global IT companies to expand social contributions and future customer bases. Through its subsidiaries Korea Investment Accelerator (KIAC) and Korea Investment Partners, the group collaborates with Microsoft to host the "Synergy Club" workshop, providing global scaling opportunities to over 40 promising startups like FuriosaAI, BioDesignLab, and Enerzai. Since its inception, KIAC has invested 40.8 billion Korean won in 120 companies, with 66% of investments targeting startups under three years old, solidifying its position as a "first institutional investor."

Hanwha Investment & Securities is pioneering the real-world asset tokenization (RWA) market. It made strategic investments totaling approximately 18 billion Korean won in U.S. Web3 specialist "Chrysus" and 10 billion Korean won in "Cross Angle," the operator of virtual asset data platform "Zanggle," to expand its digital asset infrastructure.

This article has been translated by Upstage Solar AI.