How the Financial Sector is Preparing for its AI-led Future

As traditional banks grapple with the challenges posed by FinTechs, legacy constraints and traditional operational models, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is emerging as the savior. Businesses in the business of wealth are sparing no efforts to start to tap the potential of AI by experimenting and prototyping: intelligent digital assistants to amplify service, data-models to automate smart lending decisions, fraud detection through pattern recognition, and speech & face recognition. Throughout the financial services world, whether it is machine learning, deep learning, or a series of algorithms that can crunch away into tons of big data, AI is giving the financial services sector distinct strategic advantages – ranging from breakthrough efficiencies to service differentiation advantages - to engage and connect more effectively with the one segment of humanity whose role will never be replaced by machines: customers. According to recent research, Amplifying Human Potential: Towards Purposeful Artificial Intelligence, conducted by Infosys which assessed the impact of AI and current levels of AI maturity in enterprises, adoption is rising smartly, creating the expectation that worldwide by 2020, companies will see AI contributing a 39 percent average increase in revenue and a 37 percent average cut in operating costs. The study found that financial organizations invested much more in AI than other businesses (US$14.6 million versus an average US$6.7 million for all respondents).