UK “digital wealth” platform Moneyfarm recently acquired the financial chatbot technology startup Ernest with an aim of moving into the personal financial management space.

Founded in 2015 by Niall Bellabarba, Cristoforo Mione and Sicilia, Ernest was developing a personal AI powered, finance manager, designed to run on top of Facebook Messenger. The chatbot used NLP to answer customer questions related to transactions and bank accounts and also provide proactive notifications to help you manage your money better.

Giovanni Daprà, co-founder and CEO of Moneyfarm, comments: “Artificial intelligence and a conversational user interface will help us to improve our algorithms and ultimately offer a better product to our customers. As we work to integrate chatbot technology across our product offering we’ll be able to assist over an individual’s full wealth lifecycle, from the first pay cheque through to retirement.”

Moneyfarm plans to use the technology behind Ernest to on-board or acquire more customers. The company also plans to use the customer’s transactional data to provide them more informed advice.

Ernest CTO Lorenzo Sicilia has joined the Moneyfarm team to oversee the technology integration project.