Mumbai: Jio Financial Services on Friday announced an expansion of its app to work like a marketplace which will also sell third party products.
The artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural networks-powered new JioFinance app will also eventually build a ‘financial score’ for users and advise them on a range of aspects to manage finances, top officials have said.
“We wish to re-imagine financial services distribution with the new features in the app,” JFS managing director and chief executive Hitesh Sethia said.
The app has been running for over a year now and has over 20 million users. From Friday, the company will be getting into the ‘public closed user group’ with the new features for a wider set of people.
Working in a conversational way where the user types out queries or requirements, the app is designed to take care of ‘choice fatigue’ by offering tailor-made alternatives on a range of financial products including credit cards, personal loans, home loans, mutual fund investments, insurance protections etc on a single platform.
The company has tied up with over 50 credit cards and 90 insurance products to be made available on the platform, he said, adding that the broader Reliance ecosystem, which helps it reach up to 700 million Indians, will be utilised for reaching out to people.
Stressing that the app is compliant with privacy laws, Sethia said the app will work with user consent wherever needed to offer the best alternative on a product to people.
Eyeing a win-win model for all, Sethia said the app will seek to offer the best-priced deals for a customer, lower distribution costs to the supplier and eventually lead to better business for the app as well.
Declining to share any business targets with the revamped offerings, Sethia said like every other business, it will have to stand on its own feet.
A few months down the line, plans are afoot to come up with a ‘personal CFO’ for users by scoring a user’s finances by assessing savings, investments, protection across the ecosystem and also offer advice on corrective actions in portfolios as it deems.
Sethia said the app is hosted by JFS’ wholly-owned subsidiary Jio Finance Platform and Service, which has a registered investment advisor (RIA) license from Sebi.
