The final panel of EBAday 2024 featured Patricia Hines, head of banking and payments at Celent, talking all things AI with Sarah Amara, head of European currency and payments at HSBC, Gurumurthy Palani, head of transaction banking at Gulf International Bank, Christian Sarafidis, CEO of financial services EMEA at Microsoft, and Andy Schmidt, global industry head of banking at CGI.
Hines began the session by saying that in financial services, technology isn't just about technology. When it comes to AI, financial institutions are looking at how it can improve operations and revenue, as well as how to scale AI sustainably. To get a feel for the room, Hines asked the audience which genAI use cases will be most significant in originations over the next year.
The poll results were the most diverse of all the EBAday panel sessions, demonstrating the wide range of possibilities genAI offers financial institutions: 31% said streamlining operations would be their primary use case, 29% voted for improved customer service, and 25% for enhanced risk assessment and fraud management.
The panel discussion centred around a number of use cases each organisation is experiencing: “What we're trying to achieve for our clients is zero friction. The advancements we've been able to make are what we call predictive and personalised customer service,” she said, before going on to describe other AI use cases in the financial services sector, combining historical data with predictions around payment processes and digital risk assessment: “We've been able to reduce false positives by 60%.”
Gurumurthy added that a combination of AI, automation and the checking process is the best fit. “Extracting and classifying data helps empower our operational team. We have extended this to sanctions screening and other checks as well. This has worked efficiently for the last six months and we are now looking at expanding it to customer-facing services.”
Schmidt agreed, emphasizing the need to develop AI responsibly: “A recurring use case is, as a bank, how can we speak to our customers in a more personalized way? Anyone can use Amazon recommendations, but can we provide recommendations based on stage of life, savings, mortgage interest rates? These are things to consider.”
Speaking of customer-facing use cases, the panel highlighted AI's ability to more quickly integrate data that's important across all aspects of the business. Schmidt summarized: “Customer service, personalization — that's where AI can come into play in banking.”
Speaking of challenges, Sarafidis spoke about the speed at which AI is being adopted and developed across industries: “Chat GPT reached 100 million users in two months, which is unprecedented.” He stressed that the key to mass adoption is not only leadership, using AI to complement humans, but also the model itself. Given that 92% of AI use cases are less than a year old, he stressed that at this point in the adoption of the technology, buying off-the-shelf is recommended rather than building your own solution in-house.
Finally, the panel discussed when AI should not be used and to what extent it is expected to be affected by EU regulation. The panel agreed that regulation in this area is inevitable; EU AI legislation is already under consideration, as with great capabilities come great responsibility. Remaining resilient and protecting data is essential to maintaining the health of the entire industry.
