While ethical artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics adoption can add about US$2 trillion (S$2.7 trillion) of value each year to the global banking and insurance industry, a Temasek survey showed that only 13 per cent of the sector uses AI solutions across the bulk of its processes. Financial firms in select markets including Singapore were polled in the survey. About 31 per cent of the companies are still only dipping their toes in AI-driven solutions, while more than half of the respondents fell somewhere in the middle - using AI in some areas, but not harnessing its full potential. The findings mean that, while almost all financial services companies use AI in their processes in some way, they differ in the extent of AI deployment, with an overwhelming 93 per cent of the companies demanding that AI solutions should be trustworthy, said Temasek. The study was conducted by Temasek in March this year, on an anonymous basis, with 39 decision-makers from banks and insurance companies in the United States, Europe, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Virtual avatars might well be the future of customer support. According to Juniper Research, conversational assistants will drive cost savings of over $8 billion annually by 2022 (up from $20 million in 2017). In fact, chatbots are anticipated to power 85% of all customer service interactions by year-end 2020 -- already, 42% of consumers use them on the regular. It was with this in mind that Greg Cross and Mark Sagar, a former special projects supervisor at director Peter Jackson's Weta Digital, founded Soul Machines in 2016. The goal was to develop a suite enabling clients to build interactive customer experiences.

SparkCognition, a global artificial intelligence (AI) leader that builds AI technology to advance the most important interests of society, announced the close of its Series C funding of $100 million led by March Capital Partners. With overall funding of $175 million since its inception in 2013, SparkCognition is now one of the most valuable startups in Texas and one of the most valuable AI startups in the United States. "In a short few years, SparkCognition has proven itself to be one of the leading industrial AI companies in the world," said Sumant Mandal, Managing Director and co-founder of March Capital Partners. "We are proud to lead their Series C round, and look forward to working closely with the company to drive its success even further." SparkCognition builds AI technology for industrial applications–revolutionizing the way industries like oil and gas, defense, utilities, aviation, and financial services manage such critical functions as efficiency and safety.

Investors are not shying away from investing in new emerging, technologies. Both blockchain and artificial intelligence are grabbing massive amounts of investment attention. The recent one is Singapore's investment company Temasek that is setting new groups to explore opportunities in these two technologies. As per an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg, the company is creating so-called "experimental pods" to focus on these two areas, which it sees as long-term trends impacting multiple industries and geographies. The new group will be overseen by Chia Song Hwee, the chief operating officer of key management arm Temasek International.

SINGAPORE: Temasek International, the management arm of Temasek Holdings, is looking at transnational business-to-business (B2B) payments, fraud detection, as well as artificial intelligence as key areas of investment. Speaking at the Investors Summit on Friday (Nov 17), the president of Temasek International Chia Song Hwee said it will be emphasising on those areas over the next five years. "There is increased complexity and complication between various parties interacting in (the) social and commercial world," said Mr Chia, who is also chief operating officer of Temasek International. "What we want to focus on are the businesses or innovation of technology that will remove the friction in this complicated process." Mr Chia said that B2B payments have very high friction costs, or expenses that come with financial transactions in the form of fees, commissions and tax implications.