- By John Fernandez
- BBC Guernsey Political Reporter
William Mason believes artificial intelligence will change the way work is done
Artificial intelligence (AI) will bring a “business transformation” to Guernsey’s financial industry, the regulator said.
The Executive Director of the Guernsey Financial Services Commission (GFSC) spoke after a conference examining the role of AI in the field.
William Mason said this would “change jobs” but not lead to a loss of workforce.
He believes more basic tasks will be performed by AI, freeing up staff to focus on more complex roles.
“Right now we are in a society of full employment, but Guernsey does not have enough qualified people for jobs like the financial services sector,” Mason said.
“I think it would be great if we could do more value-added work here and make smarter use of the people of Guernsey because of AI.”
“Think about how you’re going to live it.”
In 2021, the financial sector contributed more than £1.2m to Guernsey’s economy, or more than 36% of total GDP.
In 2022, the sector will employ 5,960 people across the island.
One area he believes could benefit is processing applications to fund new insurers through the GFSC.
“A lot of manual paperwork is required at this point,” Mason said.
“In the future, we will probably build an AI system that will do 90% of it electronically.
“So decision makers will be performing all these checks electronically and ultimately making decisions based on AI instructions, so humans will still be involved.
“But a lot of the mundane will go away.”
“We need to figure out how to coexist with it and coexist well.”
