Artificial intelligence use poses an ESG headache for global financial industry

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often touted as the cure-all for financial services firms' ability to deal with the looming data onslaught stemming from environmental, social & governance (ESG) regulation. Yet ESG also poses an existential threat to the financial services industry's use of AI The European Union's Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation has required asset management firms to begin collecting millions of data points from the companies in which they invest, and the forthcoming Corporate Sustainable Reporting Directive will only add to the volume of data points. Further, there is the data being collected under the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) initiative and the International Sustainability Standards Board's plans to create a baseline for ESG reporting. Taken all together and it becomes clear that AI-enabled systems will be essential to firms' efforts to make sense of -- and profit from -- all these requirements. The carbon footprint from storing and processing data is enormous and growing, algorithms have already been shown to discriminate against certain groups in the population, and a lack of technology skills in both senior management ranks and the general workforce leave firms vulnerable to mistakes.