Everywhere you look, artificial intelligence is dominating the headlines. In financial services, it has been heralded as a way to make major advancements in cybersecurity and compliance, but in actuality, it's capable of much more. Conversational AI--using virtual assistants and smart bots to engage in intelligent conversations with customers--is poised to be one of the most impactful areas in the financial services industry. In a highly regulated industry built on core legacy banking systems, strategically leveraging the latest technology can be a challenge. However, the banks that adopt conversational AI will gain a competitive advantage by unlocking the ability to solve their most strategic problems.

Whether you blame robots, artificial intelligence, or automation more broadly, the proactive professional needs to plan for a successful career in a future without jobs . It is not enough to know how to navigate a company hierarchy because that company may completely restructure. It is not enough to understand how to find another job because it might make more sense to freelance or launch a business. It is not enough to develop deep expertise in any one industry because your industry might be disrupted beyond recognition (my two main industries, financial services and media, look nothing like they did when my career started 25 years ago!). In a future without jobs you have to be far more self-reliant and prepared to constantly drum up your own opportunities.

The largest fund company in the world, BlackRock, has faced a thorny challenge since it acquired the exchange-traded-fund business from Barclays in 2009. These low cost, computer-driven funds have exploded in growth, leaving in the dust the stock pickers who had spurred an earlier expansion for the firm. The rise of passive investing -- exchange-traded funds, index funds and the like -- has revolutionized the investment world, providing Main Street investors with greater opportunities at lower fees while putting pressure on even Wall Street's biggest money managers. Now, after years of deliberations, Laurence D. Fink, a founder and chief executive of BlackRock, has cast his lot with the machines. On Tuesday, BlackRock laid out an ambitious plan to consolidate a large number of actively managed mutual funds with peers that rely more on algorithms and models to pick stocks.

Yoshinori Nomura felt like weeping. It was the morning of June 24, Brexit day, and markets were moving against him. It was the hedge fund manager's self-learning computer program that had placed the bet, selling Japanese stock-index futures before a sizable market advance. Nomura had anticipated a rally, but decided not to interfere, and his fund was paying the price. Then, in an instant, everything changed.

As hedge funds embrace the cool calculations of big data, they find themselves wrestling with something far more human -- a struggle for power. The firms have been loading up on data scientists and coders to deliver on the promise of quantitative investing and lift their ho-hum returns. But they are discovering that the marriage of old-school managers and data-driven quants can be rocky. Managers who have relied on gut calls resist ceding control to scientists and their trading signals. And quants, emboldened by the success of computer-driven funds like Renaissance Technologies, bristle at their second-class status and vie for a bigger voice in investing.

These days there's no shortage of things to keep you awake at night, wherever you stand on the political spectrum. For others it's the prospect of Brexit being thwarted. For others still, it's whether the Chinese economy will hold up, what the outcome of the US presidential election will be or the risk of artificial intelligence taking over your job. So what's the best way to handle the inevitable anxiety that goes hand-in-hand with all that uncertainty? Will Borrell studied that anxiety up close after the Brexit vote in the UK earlier this year.

According to technologists, the future of Fintech looks like this: we are all going to be paying for goods and services with our thumbs, robots will make sure our pensions don't decrease, AIs will manage hedge funds, online only banks will be available, we'll be able to get cash from our favorite merchant with our cell phones, credit and debit cards will become extinct, global money transfers will be automatic, market place lending will offer a peer-to-peer option, and it will be impossible to launder money. The incumbents and infrastructure that drive future finance will eventually be replaced by financial technology. However, I believe only those Fintech firms doing it for the right reasons will be successful. Is the new technology cheaper than the current norm? Does it provide a seamless, easy to use solution?

Yoshinori Nomura felt like weeping. It was the morning of June 24, Brexit day, and markets were moving against him. It was the hedge fund manager's self-learning computer program that had placed the bet, selling Japanese stock-index futures before a sizable market advance. Nomura had anticipated a rally, but decided not to interfere, and his fund was paying the price. Then, in an instant, everything changed.