Financial firms bank on A.I. as pilot projects head to production

The financial services sector is pouring money into artificial intelligence (AI), with banks, for example, expected to spend $5.6 billion on AI in 2019 – second only to the retail sector. Until now, the vast majority of AI projects have remained pilots, and in many cases those projects led to tech deployments without a clear business use. Simply put, it's been trendy. Most AI projects today are aimed at improving customer service efficiency and security by introducing chatbot technology, or by deploying machine-based learning to uncover trends across business lines in customer behavior and what they need. "It's about ensuring banks are able to retain the memory of a customer's journey across bank services," said Sankar Narayanan, chief practice officer at analytics service provider Fractal Analytics.