Are businesses giving AI the support it needs to grow and scale?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming industries, and financial services are no exception. This paper explores how AI can revolutionise both customer interactions and back-office operations within banks and insurance companies. AI-powered tools like chatbots and recommendation engines can answer questions 24/7, identify customer trends and suggest personalised products, all of which can significantly improve customer satisfaction. In the back office, AI automates repetitive tasks such as data analysis and document processing. This frees up human employees to focus on more complex and strategic activities, while also leading to cost savings and increased efficiency. However, implementing AI in financial services comes with its own set of challenges. Businesses must continuously invest in AI to keep pace with rapid technological advancements. Regulatory frameworks are struggling to adapt to the evolving nature of AI, which creates uncertainty for businesses. Additionally, ensuring transparency and fairness in AI decision making, especially with complex algorithms, is a major hurdle. The quality of data used to train AI models is also crucial. Biased data can lead to discriminatory outcomes, so maintaining high-quality data is essential. These challenges have led to the development of explainable AI (XAI) models, which can explain their reasoning, helping to address transparency concerns and meet regulatory requirements. Data quality management strategies are also required to ensure data is complete, accurate and unbiased for ethical AI implementation. On a global scale, collaboration among international organisations and governments is necessary to establish consistent and effective AI regulations. The paper concludes that the human element is invaluable in the age of AI. Human expertise is needed to program AI systems, address ethical considerations, and manage potential biases within the data. Furthermore, the workforce needs to be upskilled and reskilled to adapt to the changing landscape with AI. The paper recommends a ‘human-in-the-loop’ (HITL) approach, in which human judgment is combined with AI capabilities for responsible and efficient decision making. Collaboration and international harmonisation are key to ensuring responsible and ethical AI adoption in financial services.