An Intelligent Personal Digital Assistant for Financial Inclusion—Exploratory Research on the Design of the Ecosystem

This paper explores how digitalization, specifically an AI-enabled intelligent Personal Digital Financial Assistant (PDFA), can alleviate poverty. Drawing from principles of Service System Engineering and Behavioral Economics, we investigate the key design considerations for the PDFA and its ideal embedding within an Inclusive Ecosystem. Our analysis underscores that the user-centric value proposition, ecosystem development, and the creation of a robust AI platform are integral elements that must be concurrently addressed during the initial stages of the service design process. Building the ecosystem is a precarious process, especially in a developing nation like Suriname, and is a step in the design process that should be brought forward in time due to the long lead time. Our future research plans are to continue to carefully build the ecosystem and conduct focused focus groups to refine the user-centric value proposition.