People and culture driving AI transformation in financial services

Customer demands, technology automation and artificial intelligence (AI) have all been driving forces behind innovation in financial services, and now with the greater emergence of generative AI (GenAI), it has taken this evolution to another level. In many markets, up to three quarters (75 percent) of banks are already using AI, and a further 10 percent are planning to use this technology over the next three years, showing the growing acceptance and usage of AI in the financial services sector.

Whilst AI has mainly been used to increase efficiency on the back-end, GenAI is now making its way to the front-end, reinventing customer-facing applications. This is changing the way banks operate and communicate with their customers. However, the successful implementation of GenAI goes beyond just deploying that technology to the culture, skills and people in the organisation.

How AI and GenAI can be used internally

Many banks have used AI and to a lesser degree GenAI to streamline back-end operations, lower manual workloads and drive productivity across all teams within the business. GenAI has several benefits, not least automating repetitive tasks or collecting, sorting, summarising and analysing large volumes of data. Automating these tasks frees up valuable time for employees within the bank to focus on higher value projects, and ensure that they are providing best-in-class customer service. It can also be a leverage point for increasing consistency and reliability in processes. For example, one bank has implemented GenAI to assist their financial economic crime analysts to more effectively process their work.

Going even further, GenAI can support employees’ internal knowledge management. Through leveraging the capabilities of GenAI, they will no longer need to sift through siloed systems and documents to find the answers, instead they will be able to quickly ask questions and receive coherent and contextual responses from across all the relevant and up to date information internally (and to a lesser degree externally to the bank). This will also translate into better customer service as agents will have an AI-powered bot ready to support.

Enhancing customer experiences with AI and GenAI

The real opportunity for AI lies in how it is used in a customer-facing capacity to deliver faster and more personalised services. This could be done through embedding AI and GenAI in chatbots and other virtual assistants that can generate tailored product and service recommendations, and provide faster resolutions to customer queries. It can also help someone in a branch, a customer service or operations centre to assist them to provide advice, and then kick off into an automated agent to complete the process,

Taking another step, with conversational AI deployed in chatbots, it can handle customer queries independently and respond in a tone that reflects the organisation. This enables the bank to provide always on customer support, and reduces the need for humans to get involved in simple customer queries. Yes, banks already had this to a degree, the conversational AI just improves not just the tone but the breadth of content and process coverage. To really make it complete though, it still needs to tie into the ability to track the questions asked, advice given and potential actions taken.

The importance of training, developing and upskilling

However, none of the above could be possible without the full support and readiness to embrace this technology from the banks’ employees. In this, it is essential that there is a top-down approach with senior leadership at the forefront of this change and education.

Already, organisations such as Lloyds Banking Group are leading the use of AI in financial services initiative. They have offered a six month “Leading with AI” course to over 200 of their top leaders earlier this year to boost AI skills amongst the senior leadership team. Programmes like these offer a wide range of education on AI, from foundational understanding to ethical implications to how AI and GenAI tools can be used. These programmes also drive AI innovation across the organisation.

The banks that will be  the most successful will be those that embed an ongoing AI literacy learning and development programme. Through these programmes it is also important that employees understand that the deployment of AI and GenAI tools is not a way to replace humans, instead it is a way to ensure that they can effectively work alongside this technology.

AI and GenAI driven tools are not a silver bullet. Rather, they are the driver of additional transformation within the banking sector. These technologies can create efficiencies within back-end operations and transform customer service. Applied correctly, you are looking at the ability to drive more consistent service levels, greater levels of productivity and customer and staff satisfaction.

For financial services intuitions to successfully deploy AI and GenAI in their operations, they must invest in their people as much as they do the technology. After all, the success of AI and GenAI tools in financial services depends on the expertise, culture, and engagement of the people behind them.