Review: The Financial Times’ Damian Fantato puts MyEva to the test during his lunch break

This review was entitled ‘Putting MyEva to the test in my lunch break’ and was written by Damian Fantato, appearing in the hardcopy version of The Financial Times newspaper on Saturday 9 November, 2019.

My interaction with artificial intelligence-generated advice started with a conversation during my lunch break with chirpy chatbot MyEva who used plenty of emojis to colour her text.

The chirpiness was slightly undercut when she provided me with terms and conditions and an Financial Conduct Authority registration number – but it was a necessary step, as this app provides regulated advice.

After asking for my email address and if I wanted to receive promotional material in my inbox (I did not), Eva prompted me to start my “financial health check” by asking me to click a button labelled “Let’s do this!”.

Essentially a fact find, I was asked questions on the chat stream about my employment and marital status, if I owned my own home, if I tended to spend more than I earn and whether I was in significant debt.

This generated a checklist, most of which wasn’t rocket science – pay into a pension, build a savings buffer and then save towards buying my first home (if only it were that easy). There was also some stuff which might be less intuitive for some people, such as writing a will and checking who gets my death-in-service benefit.

The majority of MyEva users have the service provided free by the company they work for. As an individual user, if I wanted to access certain services – such as saving into a pension – I would have to sign up and pay £2 a month. But the service to help me buy a home was free and, being millennial, I was intrigued.

It transpires that MyEva has “teamed up” with mortgage broker Alexander Hall. After I provided details of my savings and a rough idea of how much a house was likely to cost me, Eva decided I would benefit from speaking to a broker and asked if she could pass my details on to them.

It turns out robots are not going to be replacing humans just yet.

Read The Financial Times’ full article on MyEva, here.

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