Artificial Intelligence In Financial Services: Opportunities And Challenges

The increased use of Artificial Intelligence solution helps give a company an edge over its peers while continuing to be a fresh and innovative workplace

- Amit Saraswat

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is by no means a fresh concept. When you consider it as the ability of machines to interact and learn to perform faster tasks, it has been around for over six decades, lurking in scientific analysis, big data and targeted personalized customer treatment. But, as an idea, Artificial Intelligence is still a novel one; it is still the focus of numerous dystrophic science fiction novels and still excitedly whispered about in gatherings of great scientific minds. This could possibly be due to the wide potential it offers and mostly because we, as a species, are yet to grasp the countless possibilities that it promises.

For obvious reasons, machine learning improves over time as more data is processed and as more positive results achieved. Owing to this ability, AI has surpassed our expectations so much that Ray Kurzweil, computer scientist, inventor and futurist estimates that it will exceed human intelligence by 2019. Heightened interest in AI has occurred because of both capabilities and business needs. The explosive growth of structured and unstructured data, availability of modern technologies such as cloud computing and machine learning algorithms, rising pressures brought by new competition, increased regulation and heightened consumer expectations have created a ‘perfect storm’ for the expanded use of artificial intelligence in financial services. Despite AI proving its worth in virtually all industries, the banking and financial sector seems to have taken a more cautious approach.