Mizuho Financial Group said Friday that it has signed a strategic partnership agreement with SoftBank to introduce cutting-edge artificial intelligence to streamline operations and improve customer service. Mizuho will be the first in the financial sector to introduce "Cristal intelligence," which is being developed jointly by SoftBank and OpenAI, the U.S. developer of the ChatGPT generative AI tool. Mizuho expects the latest AI technology, which optimizes corporate tasks, to help the company increase revenue and cut costs, resulting in positive effects totaling 300 billion by fiscal 2030. Using the technology, Mizuho plans to analyze transaction data and market trends to quickly provide corporate customers with management advice. The financial group also expects the technology to help boost productivity in its sales activities more than twofold and reduce low-value operations by up to 50%.

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become increasingly integral to critical infrastructure and global operations, the need for a unified, trustworthy governance framework is more urgent that ever. This paper proposes a novel approach to AI governance, utilizing blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) to establish a decentralized, globally recognized framework that ensures security, privacy, and trustworthiness of AI systems across borders. The paper presents specific implementation scenarios within the financial sector, outlines a phased deployment timeline over the next decade, and addresses potential challenges with solutions grounded in current research. By synthesizing advancements in blockchain, AI ethics, and cybersecurity, this paper offers a comprehensive roadmap for a decentralized AI governance framework capable of adapting to the complex and evolving landscape of global AI regulation.

The outlook for the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial sector, especially in financial forecasting, the challenges and implications. The dynamics of AI technology, including deep learning, reinforcement learning, and integration with blockchAIn and the Internet of Things, also highlight the continued improvement in data processing capabilities. Explore how AI is reshaping financial services with precisely tAIlored services that can more precisely meet the diverse needs of individual investors. The integration of AI challenges regulatory and ethical issues in the financial sector, as well as the implications for data privacy protection. Analyze the limitations of current AI technology in financial forecasting and its potential impact on the future financial industry landscape, including changes in the job market, the emergence of new financial institutions, and user interface innovations. Emphasizing the importance of increasing investor understanding and awareness of AI and looking ahead to future trends in AI tools for user experience to drive wider adoption of AI in financial decision making. The huge potential, challenges, and future directions of AI in the financial sector highlight the critical role of AI technology in driving transformation and innovation in the financial sector

With rapid transformation of technologies, the fusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in finance is disrupting the entire ecosystem and operations which were followed for decades. The current landscape is where decisions are increasingly data-driven by financial institutions with an appetite for automation while mitigating risks. The segments of financial institutions which are getting heavily influenced are retail banking, wealth management, corporate banking & payment ecosystem. The solution ranges from onboarding the customers all the way fraud detection & prevention to enhancing the customer services. Financial Institutes are leap frogging with integration of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in mainstream applications and enhancing operational efficiency through advanced predictive analytics, extending personalized customer experiences, and automation to minimize risk with fraud detection techniques. However, with Adoption of AI & ML, it is imperative that the financial institute also needs to address ethical and regulatory challenges, by putting in place robust governance frameworks and responsible AI practices.

This paper explores the dual impact of digital banks and alternative lenders on financial inclusion and the regulatory challenges posed by their business models. It discusses the integration of digital platforms, machine learning (ML), and Large Language Models (LLMs) in enhancing financial services accessibility for underserved populations. Through a detailed analysis of operational frameworks and technological infrastructures, this research identifies key mechanisms that facilitate broader financial access and mitigate traditional barriers. Additionally, the paper addresses significant regulatory concerns involving data privacy, algorithmic bias, financial stability, and consumer protection. Employing a mixed-methods approach, which combines quantitative financial data analysis with qualitative insights from industry experts, this paper elucidates the complexities of leveraging digital technology to foster financial inclusivity. The findings underscore the necessity of evolving regulatory frameworks that harmonize innovation with comprehensive risk management. This paper concludes with policy recommendations for regulators, financial institutions, and technology providers, aiming to cultivate a more inclusive and stable financial ecosystem through prudent digital technology integration.

Recent releases of pre-trained Large Language Models (LLMs) have gained considerable traction, yet research on fine-tuning and employing domain-specific LLMs remains scarce. This study investigates approaches for fine-tuning and leveraging domain-specific LLMs, highlighting trends in LLMs, foundational models, and methods for domain-specific pre-training. Focusing on the financial sector, it details dataset selection, preprocessing, model choice, and considerations crucial for LLM fine-tuning in finance. Addressing the unique characteristics of financial data, the study explores the construction of domain-specific vocabularies and considerations for security and regulatory compliance. In the practical application of LLM fine-tuning, the study outlines the procedure and implementation for generating domain-specific LLMs in finance. Various financial cases, including stock price prediction, sentiment analysis of financial news, automated document processing, research, information extraction, and customer service enhancement, are exemplified. The study explores the potential of LLMs in the financial domain, identifies limitations, and proposes directions for improvement, contributing valuable insights for future research. Ultimately, it advances natural language processing technology in business, suggesting proactive LLM utilization in financial services across industries.

Business and consumer surveys are an essential tool used by policy-makers and practitioners to monitor and forecast the economy. Their most valuable feature is to provide timely information about the current and expected state of economic activity that is relevant to integrate the sluggish release of macroeconomic indicators. Interestingly, surveys are often interpreted as measures of economic sentiment in the sense of providing the pulse of different aspects of the economy, such as the consumers' attitude toward spending or the expectation of purchasing managers about inflation. Some prominent examples are represented by the Survey of Consumers of the University of Michigan (MCS) for the United States (Curtin and Dechaux, 2015) and the Business and Consumer Survey (BCS) for the European Union (European Commission, 2016). Although surveys are very valuable and accurate proxies of economic activity, they are typically released at the monthly frequency which might limit their usefulness in high-frequency nowcasting of economic variables (Aguilar et al., 2021; Algaba et al., 2023).

The rapid evolution of the Smart-everything movement and Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancements have given rise to sophisticated cyber threats that traditional methods cannot counteract. Cyber threats are extremely critical in financial technology (FinTech) as a data-centric sector expected to provide 24/7 services. This paper introduces a novel and refined taxonomy of security threats in FinTech and conducts a comprehensive systematic review of defensive strategies. Through PRISMA methodology applied to 74 selected studies and topic modeling, we identified 11 central cyber threats, with 43 papers detailing them, and pinpointed 9 corresponding defense strategies, as covered in 31 papers. This in-depth analysis offers invaluable insights for stakeholders ranging from banks and enterprises to global governmental bodies, highlighting both the current challenges in FinTech and effective countermeasures, as well as directions for future research.

ChatGPT, a software seeking to simulate human conversational abilities, is attracting increasing attention. It is sometimes portrayed as a groundbreaking productivity aid, including for creative work. In this paper, we run an experiment to assess its potential in complex writing tasks. We ask the software to compose a policy brief for the Board of the Bank of Italy. We find that ChatGPT can accelerate workflows by providing well-structured content suggestions, and by producing extensive, linguistically correct text in a matter of seconds. It does, however, require a significant amount of expert supervision, which partially offsets productivity gains. If the app is used naively, output can be incorrect, superficial, or irrelevant. Superficiality is an especially problematic limitation in the context of policy advice intended for high-level audiences.

Since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT, the chatbot had taken the world by storm. No wonder ChatGPT has made its way to the FinTech Industry too. OpenAI's ChatGPT is revolutionizing FinTech Industry and for all the right reasons. The usage of chatbots in the financial sector to enhance customer service and assistance is transforming the way we interact with technology. Compliance is a major issue in the heavily regulated financial sector.