Automation across financial services: hype or reality?

Whether the displacement of human labour by automation is, as is often depicted, another nail in the manual coffin seems a moot assertion. But what cannot be denied is its increasing role across the financial services (FS) sector, with some players even seeing automated environments as a panacea. Universal remedy or not, what does seem clear is that the FS sector is ripe for automation. Supporting this assertion is a 2017 report by Infosys – 'Amplifying Human Potential: Towards Purposeful Artificial Intelligence' – which found that FS companies across the globe (based on a poll of 1600 senior business decision makers at some of the world's largest organisations) are looking to automation, and its subset, artificial intelligence (AI), to boost revenues and streamline structures. "Financial institutions (FIs) are looking at automation across a fairly wide spectrum of activities," says Tom Kimner, head of global risk marketing and operations at SAS. "One recent area of interest has been an investigation of current processes around governance and compliance. With many of these processes stabilising to some degree, FIs are looking at improving and streamlining them with some form of automation to not only reduce costs but to make them more robust and repeatable."