Zopa launches Ask Zopa voice banking assistant

Zopa Bank has launched Ask Zopa, a voice-activated AI assistant available to holders of its Biscuit current account. The feature accepts spoken or typed instructions to make payments, send money to contacts, calculate and pay a user’s share of a split bill, and offer savings and planning advice.

Ask Zopa is now available to all Biscuit customers after a limited trial. The assistant operates inside Zopa’s mobile app and can connect to other accounts when customers give permission, allowing it to remember preferences and personalise recommendations. Zopa said the feature was built on the bank’s proprietary AI platform, using public large language models as a base.

The assistant can execute transactions within the app and carry on conversational exchanges about financial goals. Zopa described Ask Zopa as intended to reduce manual steps for everyday banking and to help customers automate routine finance tasks. The feature is included with the Biscuit account at no extra charge and works across voice and text channels.

Clare Gambardella, Zopa’s chief customer officer, described the agent as a tool to “help customers manage and automate their finances, complete day-to-day banking tasks, and plan and optimise for the future.” She noted Ask Zopa can act on tasks in the app and provide information or perspective if users allow access to relevant account data.

The Biscuit current account launched last year and has about 300,000 holders within Zopa’s wider customer base of roughly two million. Zopa began as a peer-to-peer lender in 2005 and wound down that business in 2021 to focus on retail banking.

Zopa published a study with Juniper Research estimating UK banks could save £1.8 billion over five years by investing in AI at similar levels, and that 187 million staff hours could be saved through back-office efficiencies. The bank also launched Jobs2030, a coalition training programme in May that aims to upskill 100,000 banking professionals in AI disciplines by 2030; 22 partners had signed up at launch.

Paula Walter, the former Aldermore Group chief technology and information officer, joined Zopa’s board as an independent non-executive director this year. She commented that she is “excited to join the board and help the business continue to innovate responsibly, strengthen its resilience and deliver exceptional customer experiences at even greater scale, supported by AI-led change and innovation.”