Language Precision in Financial Services Is Not Optional
A mortgage application involves dozens of terms that carry legal and financial weight. An APR is not the same as an interest rate. Escrow is not the same as a savings account. Collateral is not the same as a down payment. A deductible is not the same as a co-pay. When a client signs documents they do not understand — because the explanation they received was a paraphrase rather than a precise translation — the consequences can include financial loss, regulatory liability, and a breakdown in the client relationship.
Financial services professionals working with limited-English-proficiency clients face this problem at every client interaction. The solutions that exist today are either slow (scheduling a certified interpreter), expensive (Language Line charges $1.50–$3.50 per minute), or imprecise (general-purpose translation apps that reach for the nearest everyday equivalent rather than the correct financial term).
Puente with the Legal/Finance Pack is built for this gap: real-time voice translation with financial vocabulary that is precise, not approximate.
Who Uses Puente in Financial Services
Bank tellers and customer service representatives at banks with significant Spanish-speaking or Portuguese-speaking customer populations handle account openings, wire transfers, loan inquiries, and dispute resolution. Each of these interactions requires clear communication about amounts, timelines, documentation requirements, and rights. Puente’s Tabletop Mode — phone on the counter between teller and customer — allows these conversations to proceed naturally without a third party present.
Mortgage brokers explaining loan terms to non-English-speaking borrowers face a particular precision challenge: the Truth-in-Lending disclosures that federal law requires mortgage professionals to provide are only meaningful if the borrower understands them. APR, total finance charge, amount financed, and total of payments — all of these must be communicated accurately, not approximately, for the disclosure to serve its purpose. The Legal/Finance Pack covers each of these terms.
Insurance agents working with Spanish-speaking or Vietnamese-speaking households on auto, home, and life insurance policies need clients to understand what they are buying. A client who does not understand their deductible, their coverage limits, or the difference between term and whole life is not protected by the policy they are paying for. The pack covers premium, deductible, beneficiary, coverage limit, exclusion, and underwriting.
Financial advisors and wealth managers onboarding clients to investment accounts, retirement accounts, and advisory relationships need clients to understand fiduciary duty, asset allocation, risk tolerance, capital gains, and expense ratio. These are not terms that can be approximated without changing their meaning.
Tax preparers working with immigrant clients — particularly during the January–April filing season — need to explain withholding, adjusted gross income, exemptions, credits, and refund timing in terms the client can act on.
The Legal/Finance Pack: Financial Vocabulary, Precisely Rendered
The Legal/Finance Pack ($2.99 to own, or included with Plus and up) adds a financial and legal vocabulary layer to Puente’s DeepL Voice engine. Key terms covered include:
Lending: APR (annual percentage rate), origination fee, points, amortization, escrow, lien, collateral, balloon payment, prepayment penalty, loan-to-value ratio, debt-to-income ratio, underwriting, private mortgage insurance (PMI), title insurance.
Insurance: Premium, deductible, co-pay, co-insurance, coverage limit, exclusion, rider, beneficiary, policy period, claims process, subrogation, term vs. whole life.
Investment and advisory: Fiduciary, asset allocation, diversification, risk tolerance, expense ratio, capital gains, dividend, annuity, rollover, vesting schedule, required minimum distribution (RMD), beneficiary designation.
Tax: Adjusted gross income, withholding, W-2, 1099, exemption, tax credit, refund, estimated tax payment, filing status, dependent.
These terms are mapped to their correct equivalents in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Mandarin — not colloquial substitutes.
How to Use Puente for Financial Consultations
In-person consultations (Tabletop Mode): Place the iPhone on the desk between you and the client. Both parties speak at normal pace. Puente detects the language being spoken for each turn and delivers the translation as a spoken audio output. The client hears your explanation in their language. You hear their questions in yours. No one handles the phone during the conversation.
This mode is appropriate for:
- Account opening interviews at a bank branch
- Mortgage application review sessions
- Insurance policy enrollment and review
- Investment account onboarding
Remote consultations (Remote Mode): Generate a 6-digit session code from the Puente app. Share the code with the client — by text, email, or verbally. The client enters the code at puente.chat from any browser, with no download required on their end. The session begins, and both parties speak in their language with live translation throughout.
This mode is appropriate for:
- Mortgage pre-qualification phone calls
- Insurance renewal discussions
- Remote financial advisory sessions
- Follow-up consultations after an in-person meeting
Privacy in Financial Conversations
Financial conversations involve some of the most sensitive personal information people share: income, debts, assets, Social Security numbers, account numbers, and beneficiary designations. The architecture of any tool used in these conversations matters.
Puente does not record or store audio. The voice processing happens in real time; the audio is discarded immediately after translation. There is no log, no transcript, no session record on any Puente server. This means:
- No client financial information is retained anywhere by Puente after the session ends
- No audio file exists that could be accessed by a data breach or subpoena
- There is no Puente-held data that creates a compliance exposure for the financial institution
This is materially different from general-purpose translation apps that may log audio queries, store transcripts, or use conversation data for model training.
Pricing for Financial Services
Free tier: 10 minutes of translation per day. No account required. Appropriate for low-volume use — a bank teller with one or two limited-English clients per day.
Plus ($9.99/month): 300 minutes of translation a month. All conversation modes. Includes the linguistic premium and the Legal/Finance Pack for financial terminology.
Business (from $149/month): Pooled minutes and shared seats. Includes Profession Packs. Appropriate for a small branch team or insurance agency.
Enterprise (custom): Custom pricing for multi-branch financial institutions, insurance agencies with multiple agents, and RIA firms with a distributed advisor network.
Related: Profession Packs: Legal/Finance Pack vocabulary · Tabletop Mode for in-person consultations · Remote Mode for phone consultations · Privacy architecture — no stored audio · Puente for Legal Professionals
Download Puente — Financial Services Pack $2.99, or included with Plus and up