- Israeli digital bank unveils customer-focused generative AI chatbot
- Morgan Stanley rolls out AI-powered chatbot for financial advisors
- Fintech startup uses generative AI to provide financial investment advice
- Flagright introduces AI suite for AML compliance and fraud prevention
- ChatGPT for the CFO’s office
Although it hasn’t really been that long since generative AI was first introduced to the public, this groundbreaking innovation has already become a very pervasive influence in various aspects of our lives. While some of us may only be experimenting with it for fun, a growing number of people are actually using generative AI to make their jobs easier. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that some people have already come to rely on the technology to streamline certain aspects of their jobs so much that they couldn’t even imagine themselves going back to the way things were done before. One area where generative AI is starting to take on an increasingly prominent role is in the world of finance. Although the finance sector is often considered rather conservative, it simply couldn’t ignore the potential benefits offered by this innovative technology for too long. Generative AI could have a wide range of useful applications in this sector, including customer service, financial planning, wealth management, fraud detection, compliance, loan origination, and risk management. A recent report published by MarketResearch.biz reveals that the market for generative AI in finance is predicted to reach a value of $27.4 billion by 2023, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CARG) of 35.70 per cent. In this article, we will take a closer look at how some financial services companies are leveraging the power of generative AI to improve their services, streamline their operations, and increase productivity.
“Generative AI technology, replaces the traditional ‘bot’ creating an exceptional customer experience that closely resembles one-on-one human interaction, with zero wait time”.
Gal Bar Dea, CEO of One Zero Bank
Israeli digital bank unveils customer-focused generative AI chatbot
The Israel-based digital bank One Zero recently joined forces with AI21 Labs, a local AI company, to develop a new generative AI chatbot for customers. Previously, the bank relied on simple conversation menus to answer customer queries. However, the main problem with the old system was that it employed decision trees and predefined answers to generate its output, which severely restricted its effectiveness and only enabled it to answer specific questions. The new chatbot, on the other hand, uses generative AI to provide answers to a wide range of questions of varying levels of complexity. In addition to answering simple questions, such as those related to available account balances or upcoming credit card payments, it can also answer more complex questions that are beyond the abilities of conventional chatbots. For instance, it can help customers compare expenses between specific months of different years or even offer money management advice. “Generative AI technology replaces the traditional ‘bot’, creating an exceptional customer experience that closely resembles one-on-one human interaction, with zero wait time”, says Gal Bar Dea, CEO of One Zero Bank. “The integration of this technology into banking is set to redefine service standards. Paired with the bank’s proprietary AI technology, which offers valuable money management insights, it advances our mission to provide inclusive private banking services to all”. The bank plans to start with a limited pilot programme, which will only include 450 customers, before rolling it out to the general public.
“This is like having our chief strategy officer sitting next to you when you’re on the phone with a client.”
Jeff McMillan, head of analytics, data, and innovation at Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley rolls out AI-powered chatbot for financial advisors
The US-based investment bank Morgan Stanley recently announced it is working on an advanced, OpenAI-powered chatbot, which will be used to help the bank’s financial advisors get instant answers to a wide range of questions, including general business questions, process questions, and investment recommendations. “People want to be as knowledgeable as the smartest person in our firm”, explains Jeff McMillan, head of analytics, data, and innovation at the bank’s wealth management division. “This is like having our chief strategy officer sitting next to you when you’re on the phone with a client”. The chatbot has been trained on more than 100,000 internal documents, which were carefully curated by compliance officers to reduce the possibility of error. What’s more, the chatbot’s responses are constantly reviewed by humans to ensure their accuracy and eliminate the ‘hallucination’ problem that has been observed with large language models like ChatGPT, whereby they generate output that sounds plausible on the surface but is actually factually incorrect. To prevent this from happening, financial advisors are also instructed to limit their prompts to business-relevant issues. Initially, the chatbot will be tested by a smaller contingent of about 300 financial advisors. If successful, it will be rolled out to other financial advisors working across the organisation, all 16,000 of them.
“What used to take an investment associate an hour to complete can now be done in milliseconds”.
Jan Szilagyi, Toggle AI cofounder
Fintech startup uses generative AI to provide financial investment advice
Financial advisors are required to keep track of an ever-growing amount of financial data in their everyday work. To streamline certain aspects of their jobs, the fintech startup Toggle AI released a new AI-powered market analytics platform that uses generative AI to analyse institutional-grade financial data and provide sound investment advice. The platform features an easy-to-navigate chat interface, which enables investors to get answers to common questions by entering a query in natural language. The platform also enables them to make better-informed trading decisions. “By making generative AI easy to access, we believe every investor — institutional traders, hedge fund managers, financial advisors, and retail — will have the resources to ultimately get more time back in their day”, says Jan Szilagyi, the company’s cofounder. Investors can also use Toggle AI to track all holdings in a client’s portfolio and identify what’s responsible for its movement. The platform can also analyse past trends and provide a narrative around them, as well as predict possible future trends. All of the information and insights derived from the analysis can then be displayed in a chart and instantly sent to the client. “What used to take an investment associate an hour to complete can now be done in milliseconds. Investors — no matter how big or small — can become exponentially more efficient”, adds Szilagyi.
Flagright introduces AI suite for AML compliance and fraud prevention
The German software company Flagright recently announced the launch of a new AI suite for anti-money laundering (AML) compliance and fraud prevention. Based on OpenAI’s technology, Flagright AI uses generative AI to monitor merchants across multiple public sources and social media channels and identify significant changes in the nature of their business. The platform can track a wide range of metrics, including the number of products sold, the number of employees, and business industry. If it detects any suspicious activity that may be indicative of money laundering or fraud, it automatically generates real-time alerts and forwards them to the company’s FinCrime team. The software can also automatically create a suspicious activity report (SAR) for any activity flagged by the system using the built-in SAR generator, which uses natural language processing to analyse the flagged activity and extract relevant information to include in the report. To streamline the investigative process even further and reduce the amount of manual research AML and fraud analysts are required to do, the software can generate a summary of customer correspondence, saving analysts 15 per cent of time each day and significantly increasing their operational efficiency and accuracy. Another interesting feature is the AI Narrative Writer, which can reduce the amount of time it takes to write a contextual narrative for a suspicious activity by up to 90 per cent. “We believe that our AI suite will revolutionise how financial institutions approach AML compliance and fraud prevention, providing a level of efficiency and accuracy that is simply not possible with manual processes alone”, says Flagright cofounder and CEO Baran Ozkan. “With Flagright AI, our customers can stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving industry and ensure that they are always compliant with the latest regulations”.
ChatGPT for the CFO’s office
The financial planning and analysis (FP&A) platform Datarails recently announced the launch of a new product called FP&A Genius. Described by the company as “ChatGPT for the CFO’s office”, FP&A Genius will use generative AI to provide answers to a wide range of questions related to a company’s financial data and deliver invaluable real-time insights about its budgets, spend, variance, and forecasts. Want to know how this year’s revenue compares to previous years? Or how growing inflation would reflect on the company’s bottom line? FP&A Genius will be able to quickly answer these and many more questions relevant to your company’s business. “Though there has been a lot of talk about AI in finance for several years, the reality is it is not used widely”, says Didi Gurfinkel, the CEO and cofounder of Datarails. “That is going to change significantly within the next year with finance teams at small and medium businesses suddenly getting rapid access to AI-powered and connected insights. This will surface the true financial stories in their businesses, allowing them to make rapid strategic decisions and stay ahead of trends and challenges”.
In closing
Despite its relatively recent introduction to the public, generative AI has quickly become a pervasive influence in various aspects of our lives. This groundbreaking innovation is now being used by a growing number of individuals to simplify their work processes. It has become so essential in certain areas that reverting to traditional methods seems inconceivable. The finance sector, typically known for its conservatism, has also recognised the potential advantages offered by generative AI. Its applications in this sector range from customer service, financial planning, and wealth management to fraud detection, compliance, loan origination, and risk management. With the increasing integration of generative AI, the finance sector is witnessing significant advancements that enhance services, streamline operations, and boost productivity. As more companies recognise the value of this technology, we can expect continued growth and innovation in the field of generative AI in finance, ultimately transforming the way financial services are delivered.
