Is AI a fad or reality for financial services today?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is starting to impact our lives faster than we can imagine. From Amazon's digital assistant Alexa, which is now in over five million homes, to online shopping recommendations and image recognition, AI technologies have found no shortages of real world applications that are quickly becoming a familiar part of our daily lives. Financial institutions are increasingly putting faith in AI to improve consumer personalisation and automate processes in real time - but is artificial intelligence just a fad or will it play a meaningful role for today's financial institutions? Banks are only just starting to explore the use cases for robotics and integrated biometrics (which can often be seem as gimmicks rather than long term solutions) but it's in the less visible areas where AI can have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction. And whether we realise it or not, we are already seeing the benefits of AI as part of the banking transformation journey.