VIP ADVISOR: Virtual, independent advisor for personal insurance and finance risk management

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 01.0327-2

Key words (German)

Virtuell; Beratung; menschenähnlich; Spracherkennung; Sprachgenerierung;
Economic Aspects; Information Processing; Information Systems

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: IST-2001-32440

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 1.2.2 New methods of work and electronic commerce

Short description (English)

See abstract

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Coordinator: Pixelpark (Schweiz) AG (CH)

Abstract (English)

VIP-Advisor will allow for new methods of enhanced electronic financial services through natural language, speech and 3D avatar technologies, combined with intelligent and information retrieval components. The VIP-Advisor project aims to bring virtual assistants, specialised in risk management in the insurance and finance field, into new dimensions of usability and intelligence. The bringing together of different advanced technologies in a new way will make such an advisor much more 'life-like' than existing solutions. The special focus on speech recognition and advanced 3D avatar visualisation will be an ideal base for later developments on new upcoming 3G mobile devices.

Objectives:
The main idea is to develop a virtual personal insurance and finance assistant with new means of interaction. This personal assistant will be specialized in risk management counselling for small and medium enterprises but could be extended towards general insurance counselling for private persons. The virtual advisor shows up and behaves almost like a 'real' serious insurance consultant and takes the so-called 0-level support into new dimensions. It enhances the user's online information retrieval experience by an entertaining but competent and serious service.

The VIP Advisor will be:
- Individual and personal through an intelligent virtual assistant which automatically adopts to the user's needs;
- Competent through the knowledge based virtual assistant with additional case based reasoning and information retrieval support;
- Human-like through the use of a 3D video-like realistic avatar;
- Reactive and easy to use through the use of natural language processing and speech recognition technologies;
- Multilingual through the use of online translation systems;
- Multichannel capable perfectly fits even to 3G mobile devices at a later stage.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 01.0327-2