Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Banking and Machine Learning

One of the fields where Machine Learning or any other form of artificial intelligence would bring a big plus is the banking industry. I am saying this as I feel that the current interaction I have with my bank is getting from strange to weird. Although they have the data to analyze my financial behavior, shopping preferences and cash flow, data that enables them to offer me individualized offers they still offer me all the services I do not need, which is really annoying.

In fact banks have enough data to create new services and products on the fly as they can gather enough information from a large group of people. They could create interesting options for people as overnight deposits, or create instruments with dynamic interest rate or very sophisticated investment options based on people's behavior and and risk appetite. They can learn about the human nature and offer people the possibility to use the income from the new instruments to help causes or invest in projects. I would really love to have my bank involved in some kickstarter-like projects.

By gathering contextual data there is also the option to help clients protect their investments - warn them early about market conditions, offer them products for hedging risks, offer them convenient exchange rates in case of monetary issues. It makes sense that a bank keeps the customers and their capital by offering them intelligent and customized products, not treating them in a common way.

All these require little upfront investment compared to the benefits that the banks and customers can derive from it.

I have been triggered to write this as I have been struck by the apathy of the bank clerks and of the bank itself on the current situation in Romania. They did nothing proactively to offer me any mean to hedge the inflation and the worsening of the national currency exchange rate. On the long run they benefit from the money I have on their accounts and they at least should offer a minimal hedging help. I dream having a ML financial advisor on my internet banking account that could show me some hints or offer me some customized products.

Sunday, November 12, 2017

Digging in the Bytes

Did some cleaning on my NAS. Found some old tools.
I guess not available anywhere else on the internet.

Snacc for Java - IBM's Java ASN.1 compiler:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zl4973pthfeqmqi/AABKqbLcUysHL5eAm3P8xIqXa?dl=0

Ericsson SDS - IN JSLEE Service creation tool:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/q812dlav214xsw1/AAD5oS6O7fwwdL3JAfoywQsBa?dl=0

Sun GCC for Sparc Servers - Modified GCC to work with Niagara processors:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ed58tu2ttvagj4z/AACiuZHUN7KEzripcTpTWI0Pa?dl=0

DISCLAIMER: I am not sure about the current legal status of the tools. At the moment I have obtained them they were free to download and use.