Banks’ Reserved Uptake Of Generative AI Primarily Inward-Focused
Artificial intelligence (AI) has fast become one of the most important topics of our day, and worldwide banks are beginning to investigate the technology’s prospects to avoid missing out on the influence it is poised to take on the financial services sector.
Citi CEO Jane Fraser recently emphasized the need for institutions to embrace generative AI, months after the central U.S. bank reportedly limited worker access to the AI-powered chatbot.
According to Fraser, ignoring the technology exceeds the risks of engaging with it, notwithstanding worries about regulatory clarity, ethical consequences, and scalability.
“In the near term, generative AI will drastically improve productivity. Over the long term, it has the potential to revolutionize all functions across our bank and the industry—changing how we write code, onboard clients, service customers, detect fraud, develop market research, and strengthen compliance and controls,” she said.
Fraser also explained Citi’s ideas to integrate generative AI into its processes, such as taking a cautious and prudent approach and determining the why behind the need to capitalize on the technology.
“We are not chasing some shiny object,” she noted. “The investments and mindshare we’re devoting to generative AI are because we think it will help us accelerate our transformation efforts and run the bank more efficiently and at greater speeds and scale.”
However, despite AI’s disruptive potential, banks are keen to maintain the value placed on human contribution and recognize the necessity of the human intellect. “Citi will always be a human bank,” Fraser said, “and AI can and will help amplify the power of our people.”
More Inward-Looking Than Outward-Looking
One of the issues Fraser brought up was the lack of regulatory clearness and user barriers, which Fraser said may be keeping financial institutions (FI) from investigating more expansive customer-facing use cases and limiting their use to increase the productivity of internal processes.
To facilitate networking among staff members at a time when many are working remotely, Goldman Sachs, for example, has made Louisa, an AI-powered networking platform, available. The technology draws information from news sources to link people with shared interests and leverages company databases to automatically construct employee user profiles.
“Think of Louisa as an AI-powered LinkedIn on steroids,” As the CEO and founder of Louisa, Rohan Doctor notified CNBC in March. “We have smart profiles and a smart network, and Louisa reads millions of articles a week from 250 providers and begins connecting people.”
According to PYMNTS, the platform, backed by the investment bank, became independent in May after being separated from the bank’s global incubator.
The dealmaking business at Deutsche Bank stated last month that it was investigating how to utilize generative AI to automate process-driven tasks and boost efficiency, particularly for junior bankers looking over comparables and company reports.
“We are assessing these tools and they can be a game-changer for some of the work we do,” said Fabrizio Campelli, head of the German lender’s corporate and investment bank, according to the Financial News. “A lot of these technical and data-driven processes are still led by people, and generative AI has the potential to successfully automate them. That is definitely something we are looking into.”
Morgan Stanley said in March that it is showing an OpenAI-powered chatbot to help its 16,000 financial advisers guide through large volumes of internal research data for helpful information rather than depending on online content.
“You essentially have the knowledge of the most knowledgeable person in Wealth Management — instantly. We believe that is a transformative capability for our company,” said Jeff McMillan, head of analytics, data, and innovation for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
The internal-facing service follows many AI projects the institution launched in recent years and is based on GPT-4, OpenAI’s most cultivated system.
