Brief:

• JPMorgan Chase partnered with Amazon to create a skill for Alexa, the e-commerce giant’s voice-enabled digital assistant, that is aimed at big institutional investors. A voice command like “Alexa, ask JPMorgan what the price target for Apple is” will give access to JPMorgan’s research on securities, per a report rom Bloomberg.

• David Hudson, global head of markets execution for JPMorgan, said the bank is testing other features like providing prices on bonds or swaps. The Alexa skill makes information more readily available to customers without requiring the time-consuming intervention of a person or authentication.

• Separately, AAA released voice-enabled apps for Alexa and Google Home that let users browse the association’s official listing of more than 31,000 Diamond Rated Restaurants, per a release. The association has more skills in development to help customers with travel, banking and roadside assistance.

Dive Insight:

Organizations like JPMorgan and AAA have a wealth of proprietary information that’s ripe for additional methods of making it accessible to customers through voice-enabled devices that are steadily becoming more popular. Amazon took an early lead in the market for smart speakers, but other tech companies are catching on. Amazon is forecast to see its share of the smart speaker market fall from 69% in 2017 to 51% this year as products from Google, Apple, Alibaba, Xiaomi and others gain share, per TrendForce.

JPMorgan’s skill for Amazon is an early sign of how technologies that were created for the consumer market can be adapted to a business setting. New York Life Insurance will introduce Alexa features to its 12,000 agents this year to help them get details on policies and to prepare for meetings. Agents will be able ask Alexa for help on getting more information about existing customers or to learn about the firm’s latest financial products, per Bloomberg.

JPMorgan’s Alexa skill is the result of an internal competition to foster innovation. It remains to be seen whether institutional clients will be comfortable asking Alexa for information, and that willingness to use voice commands may depend on the setting. Asking for a stock quote while driving alone in a car is one possibility, but using verbal commands in an office setting may be too much of a distraction. For organizations like JPMorgan and AAA, voice-enabled apps are another way for them to provide service to customers on all available interactive platforms.