Banks Are Spending Billions On Artificial Intelligence

With banks under massive pressure to slash costs associated with the production of research on stocks and bonds in Europe, it's artificial intelligence (AI) to the rescue, with Germany's $525-billion Commerzbank leading the way with a new content-automation partnership. For Germany's second-largest bank, it's a major expenditure on research, with a partner, Retresco, that hopes to help it churn out AI-generated research reports and replace the human element in analyst notes. The AI product hasn't been fine-tuned yet, but investors will be interested to learn that it's already advanced enough to provide around 75 percent of what a human equity analyst would give an investor when writing an immediate report on quarterly earnings. Presumably, AI is more objective, too--and that's where the idea of investor protection comes into play. But equity reports reviewing quarterly earnings, says Michael Spitz, Commerzbank's head of research, have common reporting standards, so the parameters are easy to plug in to AI, the Financial Times reported.