U.S. Bank Launches Nation’s First Spanish-Language Voice Assistant for Banking, Meeting Diverse Needs

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U.S. Bank recently announced the launch of a Spanish voice assistant for banking, the first financial institution in the United States to offer this service. Asistente Inteligente de U.S. Bank is a Spanish-language version of Smart Assistant in the U.S. Bank Mobile App and it has all the same features and functionality as the popular English language version.

Customers who set their language preference to Spanish in the U.S. Bank Mobile App will now be able to complete many functions just by talking into their smartphone in Spanish. And if they’d prefer to text instead of talk, Asistente Inteligente supports that too.

Accuracy and consistent tone

Asistente Inteligente was launched with the expertise of Spanish speakers and the help from Hispanic employees in the U.S. Bank Nosotros Latinos Business Resource Group to ensure accuracy and a consistent tone and nomenclature.

“Translation apps sometimes struggle to decipher words with more than one meaning, such as ‘balance’ – are we talking about your equilibrium or how much money is in your account?” said Richard Weeks, head of conversational experiences and capabilities at U.S. Bank. “Our software engineers solved for that through a hybrid approach using smart technology, natural language processing and real-time interpretation.”

Meeting diverse needs

Spanish is the second most-spoken language in the United States - more than 13% of the population uses it, according to the U.S. Census.

Service in Spanish is Hispanic customers’ second-highest priority when choosing a bank, behind only branch location, according to MRI-Simmons’ National Consumer Study.

When it comes to digital banking, mobile devices play a larger role for Hispanic adults compared with white adults. A quarter of Hispanics are “smartphone-only” internet users – meaning they own a smartphone but don’t have traditional home broadband services, according to a Pew Research Center survey. That is compared with just 12% of white adults and 17% of Black adults.

“Asistente Inteligente is not only cutting-edge technology,” Padilla Klein said, “but precisely the kind of technology Hispanic Americans find particularly valuable.”

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