Tax season is upon us, but the reign of financial books and specialists of all kinds to answer your questions is coming to an end. You can now chat with a virtual “financial assistant” about your mortgage, insurance and other questions for free.
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Artificial intelligence is now helping citizens improve their personal finances. Sérafin, an intelligent financial assistant developed by Jean-Philippe Laforge and his team, can chat with you for hours. And good luck cornering him with a tough question. It takes into account your context and the reality in Quebec to offer the most sophisticated answers.
Illustration by Jean-Philippe Laforge
“What we have developed is a multi-agent system. “Imagine that someone in an accounting office receives a question and can go to other people in the office to find the answer,” explains Jean-Philippe Laforge, a trained accountant and co-founder of Welcomespaces.io, an access platform Financial specialists.
“Each agent has their own specialization and problem-solving scheme. We only see Sérafin, but he has multiple personalities and teammates. And it’s getting better every day,” he says.
Taxes and Mortgages
The journal conducted some tests. “What is my marginal tax rate on a salary of $112,000?” Sérafin does the math and quickly comes to his answer: The combined marginal rate is 45.71%. We can then continue the conversation by asking, for example, “If I get an X% raise, how much more taxes will I pay?” and so on.
“The most popular questions are tax questions. RRSP and CELIAP questions are also very popular. And of course everything about the mortgage. “How much is the down payment on a house?” “What will my mortgage payment be when I renew?” etc.,” says Jean-Philippe Laforge.
For financial idiots
The idea to design Sérafin came about after a survey his company conducted on Quebecers and their personal finances. “We have been working on artificial intelligence for six months and found in the survey that people don't understand anything about personal finance. “It was really dramatic what we saw there,” says Jean-Philippe Laforge.
“We've been working on artificial intelligence for over a year and when I saw it I said to myself, 'This has the potential to revolutionize the way we work in finance.' And if we don’t do it, someone else will,” he adds.
Jean-Philippe has even had his accountant friends (CPA) test it out, and some of them even want to use it to help them respond to their clients. “And we’re just getting started with artificial intelligence. Where will we be in a year? In just six months it will be incredible what we can achieve.”
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