The future of AI in Philippine BFSIs: Contextual, connected, compliant

THERE'S A MOMENT in every new technology journey when the "training wheels" eventually come off.

- By David Irecki

That moment appears to have arrived for agentic artificial intelligence (AI).The move from experimentation to specialization is clearly picking up speed as governments and industries race to build sovereign and sector-specific AI ecosystems across healthcare, education, manufacturing, and finance.

If we look at the Philippines, banking, financial services, securities, and insurance (BFSI) companies in particular are stepping into a new phase of AI adoption aimed at improving customer experience, risk management, and efficiency. In 2024, a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) survey found that 44% of institutions had implemented at least one AI system in production, while 60% had formally included AI/machine learning in their future plans.

Today, the challenge in adopting AI goes far beyond automation. Institutions have to make sure AI works seamlessly within legacy systems, is contextually relevant, interoperable, and meets regulatory requirements.

In practice, the path to AI success must align with the three C's of staying contextual, connected, and compliant.

With AI adoption, the measure of success is not how big the model is but how intelligently it understands context. In a country as linguistically diverse as the Philippines, with 184 living languages including Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, and countless mixed-language communications, AI systems must be able to have a good grasp of local languages and their nuances.