CFA Institute, a global association of investment professionals, released the fourth report in its Future of Work series, exploring the Context, Culture, and Content of Work in the investment industry. Advancing technologies and hybrid working continue to change the shape of careers in finance. The Future of Work in Investment Management: The Future of Skills and Learning draws on CFA Institute survey data to identify the skills and learning equation for building talent and careers in a rapidly transforming investment industry. The report highlights current gaps between the supply and demand for skills in the investment industry, examines learning trends, and proposes changes to investment teams to better leverage diverse talent and the combined power of discrete but complementary skills. Fewer than half of survey respondents receive support from employers to develop the new skills they need.

The future of technology is determined by a handful of venture capitalists. The world's 10 leading venture capital firms have, together, invested over $150 billion in technology startups. The venture capitalists who run these firms decide which startups today will develop the new platforms and technologies that will shape our lives tomorrow. There is a startling lack of diversity within the venture capital sector. This means that a small group of men -- mostly white men -- make decisions that affect all of us. Unsurprisingly, they all too often ignore the broader societal and human rights implications of these investment decisions.

We live in interesting times. Banking today is more complex, competitive and fast-moving than it's ever been; it requires dealing successfully with extraordinary challenges, some of which have no historical precedent. However, those challenges also come bundled with extraordinary growth possibilities for organizations sufficiently smart and agile enough to cope. The fundamental challenge hasn't changed: How to assess and hedge against risk to the necessary extent while simultaneously pursuing the best available investment opportunities. Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions can, by developing and refining sophisticated, data-driven, ever-evolving models of complex financial ecosystems, accurately inform and guide investment professionals.

Get the Deloitte Insights app. Since February 2020, there has been a dramatic shift in the operating environment of financial markets, with increased volatility, repricing of assets, and transitions of favored asset classes. Uncertainty abounds for investment managers. According to one hypothetical stress scenario, individual managers may have seen assets under management fluctuate by up to one-third in the United States as outflows and valuation changes have affected many during the pandemic.1 Even before the emergence of COVID-19, the situation for investment managers appeared ripe for change.

WellAI data scientists Daniel Satchkov and Sergei Polevikov will present their most recent research entitled "Reading 25 Million Studies in Seconds: Implications for Fighting COVID-19 and Managing a Portfolio" at a free webinar on August 25, 2020. The webinar will take place from 12pm to 1pm EST, and is jointly organized by the Society of Quantitative Analysts (SQA) and WellAI. Discussion will be partly based on a study "Artificial Intelligence-powered search tools and resources in the fight against COVID-19" published in the Journal of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine in June 2020, and is currently available through the PubMed database of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Sergei Polevikov, CEO of WellAI and a board director at SQA, explained: "We wanted to share our unique experience as we believe our work is relevant to both medical researchers and finance professionals. WellAI data scientists had built a free COVID-19 analytical tool for medical researchers around the world in early April 2020, to help fight the pandemic. As some of us had also had previous experience as data scientists in the finance industry, we found some interesting similarities and differences in a way one applies machine learning algorithms in healthcare versus applying those in finance. What better place to share this knowledge than the SQA – one of the most recognized organization in the United States among the quantitative investment professionals?"

Some industry experts argue that machine learning (ML) will reverse an increasing trend toward passive investment funds. But although ML offers new tools that could help active investors outperform the indexes, it is unclear whether it will deliver a sustainable business model for active asset managers. Let's start with the positives A form of artificial intelligence, ML enables powerful algorithms to analyze large data sets in order make predictions against defined goals. Instead of precisely following instructions coded by humans, these algorithms self-adjust through a process of trial and error to produce increasingly more accurate prescriptions as more data comes in. ML is particularly adaptable to securities investing because the insights it garners can be acted on quickly and efficiently.

In this report, we seek to identify high-impact applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data in investments and best practice in their implementation by examining specific use cases. For this purpose, we conducted interviews with investment industry practitioners around the world and from different areas of investments, mostly in April and May 2019. We found that relatively few investment professionals are currently exploiting AI and big data applications in their investment processes. To provide a guidepost for investment firms and individuals seeking to move toward the latest technological frontier, we spoke with a selection of institutions across the globe that are currently using these technologies; these are among the AI pioneers in investment management. Their use cases are illuminating.

Larry Cao, CFA, is the author of AI Pioneers in Investment Management from CFA Institute. AlphaGo brought artificial intelligence (AI) out of computer labs and into the living room. From October 2015, when the AlphaGo AI first beat a professional human competitor, to January 2018, several months after it defeated Ke Jie, the top-ranked player in the world, AI's popularity had tripled as measured by Google Trends. Investment professionals have watched all this from the sidelines with a mixture of excitement and anxiety: Will AI beat humans in investing too? Let me break down some of the report's major revelations.

What is the future of work in the investment industry? How do we, as providers of human capital prepare for the evolution of this profession? What does it mean for employers seeking to engage and motivate staff over the long term? It is widely accepted that, like most other industries, the financial services industry is in a state of flux. Unlike other episodes of change in recent decades, the current context is often characterised as an "industrial revolution" creating continual disruption of a structural nature. On that backdrop, the prudent approach is to prepare, not predict.

A search for'Financial Data Science' actually returns as many as 56,800,000 entries. But, what is meant exactly by Financial Data Science? Is it just another buzzword in the context of the much-touted digitalization of the economy? When artificial intelligence is mentioned in the financial market, then many immediately imagine losing jobs they fear will be replaced by algorithms or robots. In truth, Artificial Intelligence (AI), will end up creating thousands of jobs in areas such as design, 'feeding' and programming.