Increased efficiency, and reducing operating costs, is perhaps GenAI’s most well-known benefit. Whether it’s automating repetitive tasks such as data entry or analysis, processing vast amounts of information with greater precision and fewer errors than humans, producing operational content such as meeting minutes or summaries, or conducting faster searches of complex data using natural language, GenAI is saving financial service firms time and money, and enabling more effective resource allocation. According to IDC, 36% of financial services firms are planning AI use cases in the next two years to boost revenue with new business models, products, or services.
Customer service, in fact, is another area in which GenAI promises to deliver high impact. As anyone who has ever opened an investment account can attest, new client onboarding involves a lot of filling out and signing of documents, an arduous process for both financial service institutions and their customers. Once a client is on board, there’s still the matter of understanding and managing their assets, and identifying the best opportunities for their particular portfolio – an increasingly challenging task as asset classes expand and become more complex. Yet today’s consumers, investors, and corporate customers expect a fast and smooth onboarding experience, plus the best advice and asset management available, quickly. That’s where GenAI can play a role.
In banking, AI is equipping financial institutions with new tools for personalized service and stronger client relationships. AI will help to improve the effectiveness of targeted marketing campaigns, streamline lending and mortgage processes, and safeguard assets with advanced fraud analysis.
In capital markets, it improves market research and analytics, personalizes the client experience across digital channels, and helps tailor services to individual needs.
In insurance, AI will accelerate value by automating complex, high-value processes such as underwriting, claims management, and policy administration while improving risk modeling and compliance.
It’s all in the execution
Enterprises with a foundation already in place, in the form of cloud infrastructure that offers readily-scalable computing power, will very likely have an early advantage. Not simply because they’ll have the technology required to accommodate GenAI. Financial service institutions that work in the cloud will already be familiar with ways to assess and manage risks associated with third-party technology and solutions.
For financial service organizations about to embark on their GenAI journey, several guiding principles should remain top of mind. First, we recommend creating a strategic blueprint, setting out how you’ll prioritize and introduce Generative AI use cases into your architecture, and noting what structures, skill sets, and processes you’ll need to achieve your goals. When building an operating structure to support its capabilities, put in place ways to track and measure value, outcomes, and ROI. Determine how to build fluency with AI across your business, with training, talent acquisition, and partnerships.
Trust through transparency
We include training large language models with data sets that are governed within the enterprise, in secure data center or cloud environments to reduce the probability of leaking proprietary company information; restricting the initial usage of Generative AI to increase accuracy, then scaling when enough comfort exists; establishing an audit trail for the data that large language models are trained on; keeping staff involved in the process to validate and verify output accuracy; and maintaining a dedicated team to oversee the large language models and ensure biases don’t creep in.