Interactive Brokers’ IBot gets to help traders manage their accounts
IBot can put traders where they need to be for a number of account management tasks, like depositing and withdrawing funds, viewing PortfolioAnalyst reports, accessing Activity Statements, and making changes to one’s market data subscriptions.
The incursion of bots into the financial services industry is a trend that has gathered pace recently. So, we are barely surprised that electronic trading firm Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBKR) keeps improving its natural language solution IBot, adding more capabilities to it.
IBot can now help traders complete tasks that require log-in access to Account Management (AM). When a trader ask IBot about funding, reports, market data and other AM-related tasks, IBot recognizes these requests and opens the relevant AM page in the web browser. For example, to fund one’s account a trader could enter: “Fund my account” and IBot will open Account Management in the browser window to the correct page.
Some of the Account-Management related commands IBot can help with are related to: Funding (for instance, “Withdraw funds from my account”), Trading Permissions (for example, “Can I trade Forex?”), Trade History, PortfolioAnalyst, Activity Statements, and Market Data.
Most recently, Interactive Brokers’ team has been working on enhancing the algorithms behind IBot. The latest improvements enable IBot to learn the phrasing style of a particular trader.
This skill is particularly useful in uncertain situations, that is, in situations where the robot is not certain what the trader is asking about. If there is more than one interpretation of one’s command, IBot will ask the trader to choose among a number of options. The selection will be remembered, and will be used to improve IBot’s comprehension. In short, the IBot will gradually learn one’s phrasing style.
Earlier this year, Interactive Brokers integrated its website search with IBot to enable educational and task-based returns. Thanks to this, IBot is now able to answer such queries as “How do I fund my account?” and “How do I transfer funds?” by returning the top five best information links from Interactive Brokers’ website.
IBot was launched in the autumn of 2016 with the purpose to provide a natural way to trade. The use of “natural language” allows traders to avoid from the disadvantages that come with a standard interface, as they are able to speak (or type) commands without worrying about the precise wording.
