How is artificial intelligence (AI) transforming financial services today?
We have discussed it with Uljan Sharka, CEO and Founder of iGenius, and our special guest Joe Bonanno, the Global Head of Data, Digital, and Innovation at Citi in the Security Services Group - during the webinar: “How Financial Service Leaders are accelerating their team with Advanced Analytics.”
You can watch the recording here:
Here are a few key takeaways from the event:
AI for Hyper-Personalization
AI and Data Analytics are crucial for unlocking the potential of data to help organizations cross-sell, upsell, and retain clients. As Joe Bonanno said, AI can hyper-personalize data to solve problems at various levels in an organization.
According to him, data is the lifeblood of any organization, and unlocking its potential through AI is paramount: “Where AI comes in you can start hyper-personalizing data sets to solve business problems”.
Uljan added “accessibility on existing applications” to improve experiences since the AI system understands that different customers have different needs and provides personalized outcomes.
"One of the biggest innovations is enabling accessibility on existing applications."
Trust and Safety are priorities
The speakers discussed how financial institutions need private control over AI models to ensure safety, trust, and privacy. While critical business use cases require narrow AI under their control, more general purposes can leverage public data.
It’s all about Data Sources Integration
They emphasized the power of combining structured and unstructured data. However, thoughtful implementation around access, security, and certifying knowledge is crucial.
"The power is bringing structured and unstructured data together." - Joe Bonanno
AI’s greatest ROI comes from leveraging context from diverse data, so integrating structured and unstructured data together is powerful but requires thoughtful implementation around access controls and certifying the knowledge.
Building Effective Teams
According to Joe, cross-functional, well-rounded teams outperform specialized individual coding skills. He looks for strategic thinkers and problem solvers passionate about the business. On the other hand, Uljan added that AI enables collaboration across traditional functional divides, bridging the gap between technical and non-technical people.
Business culture shifting
Where to start? Joe advised starting with high-value use cases and getting quick wins to prove value and change culture. Uljan stressed solving today’s problems first and understanding customer perspectives to benefit quickly from AI. A priority will also be to educate leadership on the art of possibility, run small experiments to build traction, and gradually shift culture.
Conclusion
As the webinar showed, there are many opportunities to leverage AI in financial services; taking into account trust, safety, teams, and customers' needs will be crucial for success.