Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already brought about large changes throughout society, maybe nowhere more than in the world of business. The financial services industry is no exception.
According to a survey conducted by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) and SAS, 81 per cent of risk professionals have already seen the benefits that AI has had on the industry and will continue to have in the future as it improves.
Outside of this majority of the industry, optimism is quite prevalent regarding just how much AI will improve their daily work lives. In fact, of those surveyed that have not yet had the chance to see the benefits of AI in their industry, a staggering 84 per cent said they were planning on implementing it in the next three years.
Even more astounding, is that of everyone surveyed, at least 95 per cent say they see the opportunity for improvements to their field in the future through such facets as higher productivity, faster time to gain insights from data, and more data insights for faster, better decisions.
With all that said, that does not mean that there are no hurdles left to jump over before those improvements can be seen.
Throughout the many reasons listed by those surveyed, the top concerns regarding the implementation of AI in the financial industry were data availability and quality (59 per cent), key stakeholders’ lack of understanding of AI (54 per cent), lack of necessary skills to implement and maintain AI systems, and interpretability of models (47 per cent).
While hurdles need to be jumped and questions must be answered, it would seem that AI is bound to be a fixture of the financial services industry as we move forward into the future.
“At this point, there’s little doubt that AI is here to stay, and that is no different for risk professionals and financial services firms,” said Mark Carey, Co-President at GARP. “While more than half of survey respondents described at least moderate knowledge of their firms’ current and planned use of AI, the survey suggests institutions are still very much exploring AI, with a lot of questions remaining.”
