Banking on Bots: Mitigating Algorithmic Bias in Financial Services

When developing new technologies, we must ensure that they operate fairly. At a time when identity is increasingly being used as the key to digital access, any technology based on identity must function fairly and equally for everyone, regardless of race, age, gender, or other characteristics leading to human physical diversity. While digital services have proliferated across many industries, this issue is particularly relevant in the financial sector, as Covid-19 accelerates a shift towards automated platforms delivered remotely by banks and other providers – with biases in AI having stark implications for unfairly rewarding certain groups over others. How does AI bias creep into machine learning models? Algorithmic decision making relies on machine learning techniques that recognise patterns from historical data.