OREANDA-NEWS. Sberbank will help its clients change their financial habits and provide them with useful recommendations via a new personal assistant service in Sberbank Online. For example, the service will suggest that the user submits a tax rebate on time, remind them to buy presents for International Women’s Day on March 8, and provide tips on where to go during a vacation.

This function, which employs machine learning, can be found in a new section of the application called "My Assistant", where users can also analyse their expenses and set up and monitor monthly budgets. The assistant service gives recommendations based on the client’s financial activity. If the client likes the suggestion, they can tap on a link to use the service or find out more information.

The assistant has been built using technology that includes several machine learning methods. These include a gradient boosting algorithm, which helps to predict events in clients’ lives such as vacations, expenses during public holidays or payment of taxes. Reinforcement learning algorithms enable the assistant to take client feedback into account and subsequently improve the advice that it provides.

"Our Assistant is the first Sberbank Online service that helps clients in their everyday lives using machine learning," commented Svyatoslav Ostrovsky, Head of Sberbank’s Bank XXI Department. "We believe in this technology and will make use of it to develop our digital products."

The new service is available now for the Android version of Sberbank Online. iPhone users will be able to access My Assistant within the next two weeks.