The financial services industry is far from the first thing that comes to mind when you think of VR, but Nebraska-based TD Ameritrade begs to differ with their first of a kind experience for Oculus Go.
At the firm’s conference in Last Vegas, the largest investor education conference in the industry, TD Ameritrade presented the experience to investors. It is a 360° video for Oculus Go accessed from the Oculus Video app, which gives the viewer an inside look into the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Chicago Board Options Exchange (BOE), and Bitcoin, leveraging VR to make them feel truly present.
“Visualization is a powerful tool because it makes abstract things seem more real,” said Sunayna Tuteja, head of strategic partnerships and emerging technologies at TD Ameritrade in a prepared statement. “Finance is often abstract, and we’re excited to take first step in using the power of VR, combined with our expertise and knowledge, to further demystify the often complex topic of investing. We’re on a journey to break down more barriers to entry when it comes to investing in the markets, and this is one more way we can do that.”
While VR may appear at first to be a strange leap for TD Ameritrade, it is actually part of a larger strategy to expand investor education to as many technology platforms as they can. They already provide this service over Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Alexa, iMessage for Business, and in Hong Kong WeChat too.
It remains to be seen whether VR will become a regular format for TD Ameritrade or whether other brokerage firms will follow in their path, but what is clear is that VR can have many use cases beyond gaming and entertainment.
