VAMOS unveils Lucero: Transforming financial services with AI

AFC Autumn 2024 Conference: Fintech Innovator Award

Winner: VAMOS

At the Asset Finance Connect (AFC) Autumn Conference on November 26th, VAMOS captured the spotlight by winning the AFC Fintech Innovators Award, sponsored by Lendscape. The award recognised their groundbreaking AI assistant, Lucero, which was unveiled by VAMOS Managing Director Richard Huston during an insightful presentation that detailed the tool’s potential to revolutionise customer service in the financial services industry.

Huston, with over 12 years of experience designing asset finance software across the UK, US, and Europe, explained that VAMOS was founded earlier this year to help companies harness AI technology effectively. With Lucero, the company aims to assist financial institutions in meeting modern regulatory requirements, particularly those associated with the UK’s Consumer Duty regulations. These regulations emphasise positive outcomes for customers, including vulnerable individuals, but achieving compliance at scale remains challenging due to high case volumes, working across multiple systems, and the need to review a large amount of customer and account information in a short space of time.

Lucero addresses these challenges by integrating seamlessly with existing business systems and providing tailored support grounded in factual data. The AI assistant uses advanced large language models (LLMs) to analyse customer communications and account information, generating action suggestions aligned with company policies and regulatory guidelines. Huston emphasised that while Lucero automates administrative tasks, it keeps human judgement at the forefront, as the final decision is always made by the user.

During the presentation, Huston demonstrated Lucero’s capabilities with two examples. In one case, the AI assistant efficiently handled a customer’s request to change their payment date by summarising the email, analysing the account data, and suggesting the appropriate action. Once the customer service representative had approved the suggested action, the payment date change was applied and Lucero automatically drafted a response to the customer for review before sending.

In another instance, Lucero addressed a more complex issue involving a customer experiencing cash flow difficulties. The AI assistant analysed the customer’s message, assessed their financial situation, and proposed two options: a payment holiday or a reduction in payment amount. The draft response included clear explanations and suggested contacting external resources such as the Citizens Advice Bureau for additional support. In both scenarios, Lucero’s suggestions were grounded in company policies, ensuring compliance while allowing staff to focus on more nuanced customer interactions.

Huston also highlighted Lucero’s integration capabilities. As a proof of concept, VAMOS integrated Lucero with Lendscape’s modern API in under an hour, demonstrating the solution’s adaptability and ease of deployment. This rapid integration showcased Lucero’s ability to streamline processes, such as handling a payment holiday request, while providing a fully auditable trail of decisions for regulatory monitoring.

Looking ahead, Huston outlined VAMOS’s roadmap for Lucero. The company is developing tools to monitor the accuracy of AI-generated suggestions, which could enable safe automation of simpler tasks. Plans also include real-time assistance for live customer service calls by providing live transcriptions to the AI, allowing it to provide immediate contextual guidance.

To further enhance AI innovation in the asset finance industry, VAMOS has launched an Innovation Partners Program, allowing organisations to collaborate with them more closely on their applied AI research and development work, and offering the opportunity to shape the product roadmap for Lucero as well as get early access to new features.

Winning the AFC Fintech Innovators Award was a major milestone for VAMOS. Huston commented: “Winning the AFC Fintech Innovator Award is an incredible honour, and an exciting milestone for us as a startup as we develop responsible AI solutions for asset finance. We’re thrilled that Lucero, our operations AI assistant, was so well received by the audience and judges.

“The AFC Conference was a fantastic opportunity to discuss both the challenges and opportunities around AI implementation with industry leaders, and we’re looking forward to continuing those conversations at future events,” he added.

For more information about Lucero, visit the VAMOS website or their LinkedIn page, or contact Richard Huston and his team directly at hello@vamos.dev