Scottish fintech company Aveni has raised $14 million to bring AI to the financial services sector.
The company announced its Series A on Monday (July 29), saying it would use the funding to help develop artificial intelligence (AI) products and large-scale language models (LLMs) focused on the financial services industry.
“What the financial services industry needs isn't an AI model that can quote Shakespeare, but one that offers transparency, trust, and above all, accuracy,” Aveni CEO Joseph Twigg said in a news release. “To achieve this, we need to develop small, highly tuned language models that are trained on financial services data and reviewed by financial services experts for specific financial services use cases.”
According to the announcement, the new funding will enable Aveni to work with new investors Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide to develop FinLLM, a large-scale language model purpose-built for financial services.
The funding comes at a time when the financial services industry has shown reluctance to adopt AI.
The Financial Times reported last month that banks are hesitant to adopt AI products due to concerns about regulation and job losses.
“Big banks will never hire you. [the technology] “The fastest among fintech companies” Tom BromfieldCo-founder of a neobank Monzo Group Partner of Silicon Valley Startup Incubator Y Combinator.
He also noted that generative AI “will enable banks to be more efficient and offer the same products at a cheaper price.”
The report cited Capgemini research saying only 6 percent of retail banks are ready for widespread adoption of AI, while McKinsey estimates that AI could add up to $340 billion in value per year to the global banking sector.
“People don't understand that it's there as a productivity tool,” Nasir Zubairi, CEO of the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology, a fintech advocacy group, told the Financial Times. “They still really believe it's going to take away their jobs.”
Meanwhile, a recent report by the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee's AI Working Group highlighted the technology's potential to expand access to credit, enhance fraud detection, and improve customer service.
But the report also warned of challenges around data privacy, potential bias in algorithmic decision-making, and the need to ensure AI systems comply with the law.
