Big tech companies are betting that a new wave of smaller, more accurate AI models will be more effective when it comes to business needs in areas like law, finance and healthcare.
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LONDON — More and more financial services companies are touting the benefits of artificial intelligence when it comes to improving productivity and overall operational efficiency.
Edward J. Achtner, head of generative AI at a major UK bank, says that despite bold statements, many companies are failing to see tangible results. HSBC.
“Frankly, there are a lot of arenas for success out there,” said Achtner, along with fellow AI leader Ranil Botejou at rival British bank Lloyds Banking Group and Nathalie, head of NV Ltd. He spoke with Mr. Oestman during a panel discussion at the CogX Global Leadership Summit. Advisory company for venture capital funds.
“You have to be very clinical in choosing what you do and where you do it,” Achtner told attendees at an event held at London’s Royal Albert Hall earlier this week. spoke.
Achtner outlined how the 150-year-old financial institution has embraced artificial intelligence since ChatGPT (a popular AI chatbot). microsoft– Backed startup OpenAI — launched in November 2022.
HSBC AI Leader The bank has more than 550 AI-related businesses and functions across its business lines and functions, from fighting money laundering and fraud using machine learning tools to supporting knowledge workers with new generative AI systems. I mentioned that there is a use case.
One example he cited is the partnership HSBC has with the internet search giant. google About the use of AI technology for anti-money laundering and fraud mitigation. The partnership has been going on for several years, he said. The bank has also recently been diving deeper into genAI technology.
“When it comes to generative artificial intelligence, we need to clearly distinguish it from other types of AI,” Achtner said. “We take a completely different approach to the potential risks associated with generative. While it represents incredible potential opportunities and productivity gains, it also represents a different kind of risk. Because I will.”
Achtner’s comments come as others in the financial services industry, especially leaders of start-up companies, are making bold statements about the level of overall efficiency gains and cost savings they are seeing as a result of investments in AI. It was held inside.
Buy now, pay later company Klarna says it is leveraging AI to compensate for lost productivity due to workforce attrition.
CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said the company had implemented a company-wide hiring freeze, and through the use of AI, the total number of employees was reduced from 5,000 to 3,800, a reduction of about 24%. It was announced in August. He is considering further reducing Klarna’s workforce to 2,000 people, but did not specify a timeline for this goal.
Klarna bosses have said the company is cutting its workforce across the board due to the potential for AI to have a “drastic impact” on work and society.
“I think politicians should already be looking today to see if there are other effective ways to support people,” he said in an interview with the BBC at the time. Simiyatkowski said it is “simplistic” to say that the disruptive effects of AI will be offset by the creation of new jobs through AI.
Oestman, whose London-based firm NV Ltd provides advisory services to executives at venture capital and private equity firms, addressed Klarna’s actions directly, calling headlines about AI-driven job cuts like this “unhelpful.” said.
She suggested that Klarna probably believes that AI will “add even more value to the company” and, as a result, is incorporating the technology as part of its plan to reduce its workforce anyway.
A Klarna spokesperson told CNBC that the results Klarna is getting from its AI are “very real.” “We are publishing these results because we want to be honest and transparent about the real-world impact that genAI is having on businesses today,” the spokesperson added.
“Ultimately, as long as people are ‘properly trained’ and banks and other financial services companies can ‘reinvent’ themselves in the new AI era,” Oestmann said, “it will only help us evolve.” added. He advised financial firms to pursue “continuous learning in all their activities.”
“Be sure to try these tools, make this part of your daily routine, and see if you’re curious,” she added.
Botege, chief data and analytics officer at Lloyds, pointed to three main use cases that financial firms are considering for AI. These include automating back-office functions like coding and engineering documentation, using “human interaction” like prompting sales staff, and AI-generated responses to client queries.
Botege stressed that Lloyds is “proceeding cautiously” in providing generative AI tools to banking customers. “We want to get the guardrails in place before we actually start extending them,” he added.
“Banks in particular have been using AI and machine learning for probably 15 or 20 years now,” Botege said, adding that machine learning, intelligent automation and chatbots are something traditional lenders “have been working on for a while. He suggested that this was the case.
Meanwhile, Lloyd’s executives say generative AI is still an early technology. The bank is increasingly looking at ways to scale its technology, including “using existing frameworks and infrastructure” rather than making major changes.
Boteju and Achtner’s comments echo what other AI leaders in financial services have said previously. Bahadir Yilmaz, chief analytics officer at ING, said in an interview with CNBC last week that AI is unlikely to be as disruptive as companies like Klarna are suggesting in their public messages.
“We see the same potential that they see,” Yilmaz said in an interview in London. “We just have a slightly different tone of communication,” he said, adding that ING uses AI primarily for its global contact center and internal software engineering.
“We don’t need to be seen as an AI-driven bank,” Yilmaz said, adding that lenders with many processes in place don’t even need AI to solve certain problems. “It’s a really powerful tool. It’s very disruptive. But you don’t necessarily have to say you’re putting it in every food as a sauce.”
Johan Tianberg, CEO of Swedish online payments company Trustly, told CNBC earlier this week that AI is “actually going to be one of the biggest technological levers in payments.” But he still noted that the company is focusing more on “AI fundamentals” than on innovative changes such as AI-driven customer service.
One area where Trustly is using AI to improve the customer experience is subscriptions. The startup is working on an “intelligent billing mechanism” that aims to help banks understand the best time to receive payments from subscription platform users based on past financial activity.
Tjarnberg added that Trustly has seen efficiency gains of nearly 5-10% as a result of implementing AI within the organization.
