Service offers personalized domestic and overseas share and dividend information
Kakao Bank's conversational AI service has surpassed 5 million users within a year of its launch.
Kakao Bank introduced "AI Search" last May before expanding it into "Kakao Bank AI," a unified service integrating financial calculations, transfers and financial information. The bank was the first in the domestic financial sector to apply AI to transfer and group account services.
The service reached 1 million users within three months of launch, 2 million within six months and 3 million within eight months, before recently crossing the 5 million mark — a pace equivalent to roughly 10 new users every minute since launch.
Kakao Bank has consistently upgraded the service's performance and expanded its features. In April, the bank overhauled the Kakao Bank AI system, adding investment information and card benefit search functions to improve response quality.
Since the overhaul, the daily average number of customers using Kakao Bank AI to search for investment information — including shares and funds — has risen more than tenfold. The service analyzes each user's level of investment knowledge to deliver personalized information such as domestic and overseas share prices, dividend data and portfolio analysis.
A follow-up question recommendation feature, which suggests contextually relevant queries during a conversation, has also boosted user satisfaction. Response satisfaction ratings have climbed above 90 percent, while the mid-conversation drop-off rate has fallen to around 1 percent.
The most common queries involved policy funds — led by questions about the "high oil price victim support fund" (440,000 cases) and the "livelihood recovery consumption coupon" (170,000 cases). Users also consistently asked about in-app functions such as bank statement issuance, card reissuance, deferred transit payments and automatic transfers.
Usage patterns varied by age group. Customers in their teens through 30s asked most frequently about basic financial products such as demand deposit accounts, parking accounts and housing subscription accounts. Those in their 40s through 60s and older submitted more than twice as many queries about asset management topics — shares, policy funds and investment products — compared with other age groups.
"Continuous performance improvements allowed us to grow into a service that 5 million customers rely on," Kakao Bank said. "We will establish ourselves as an AI Native Bank that makes customers' financial lives more convenient through AI technology."
won@heraldcorp.com
