AI Articles and Analysis in Finance

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a rule-based software solution that automates repetitive tasks without any self-learning capabilities. It is not inherently artificial intelligence. RPA vendors now offer AI-tools as add-ons to their automation platforms. This includes RPA applications in banking where some form of AI, such as computer vision or natural language processing, is a part of the automation workflow.

The insurance industry is responsible for a multitude of sensitive financial data concerning both its customer base and staff. Any breach to an insurance company's CRM or other claims database could compromise the personal data of multiple people at once, which puts the company at risk as well.

Hackers are cyberattackers are using more sophisticated methods to break into digital networks; they themselves have also started employing artificial intelligence techniques to bypass detection systems.

Ten years into the longest economic expansion on record, auto lenders are looking for ways to leverage new opportunities for growth and risk reduction.

Our research indicates that AI applications for risk-related banking functions are more numerous than applications for other business areas. Fraud and Cybersecurity, Compliance, Loans and Lending, and Risk Management collectively made up 56% of the AI vendor products in the banking industry, as shown in the graph below:

In the banking sector, supervisory organizations create and oversee the compliance rules that banks and other financial organizations need to follow. These compliance regulations are important for companies to carefully abide by, since non-compliance can potentially result in large fines or in extreme cases, even loss of banking licenses. 

We interviewed Jay Budzik, CTO at Zest AI, about the business value of machine learning for auto lending. We speak with Budzik about how underwriting, lending, and credit scoring is evolving as a result of advances in machine learning - both in terms of new data sources, and more advanced algorithms.

The financial services sector has been one of the early adopters of data science and AI technologies. That said, financial firms that have engaged in AI projects will have realized that they require a deep understanding of data management and skilled data science professionals to solve these complex problems.