AI Articles and Analysis in Finance

Artificial intelligence is likely to affect the entire landscape of insurance as we know it. Change is here, more is coming. Today, the insurance market is dominated by massive national brands and legacy product lines that haven’t substantially evolved in decades. This kind of stagnation has historically suggested that it is an industry ripe to be disrupted.

Real estate is a cost for nearly every business, whether leasing, owning or managing.

Process automation from AI offers a tremendous opportunity to lower costs associated with commercial real estate, especially those associated property management.

While tech giants tend to hog the limelight on the cutting-edge of technology, AI in banking and other facets of the financial sector is showing signs of interest and adoption even among the banking incumbents.

Episode summary: Although machine learning in finance is far from new, it is merely at the cusp of a much wider set of applications (in all segments of finance, from insurance to bookkeeping and beyond). Already machine learning has overhauled so many aspects of the financial landscape, from accounting to trading, and it is destined to have more and more impact as it develops further. Guest Alexander Fleiss and his team at Rebellion Research are developing and using AI which uses quantitative analysis to pick investments. Fleiss discusses the current status of machine learning in the world of finance as well as lesser-known niche applications that don’t make headlines - but do make a big impact on how businesses are run. He then goes on to explore the effects of future innovative applications of AI in the financial domain.

More data, less problems?
How AI is transforming the financial marketplace and operations from the inside out.
AI got a head-start in the information-rich financial industry over two decades ago, though the applications of today—robo-advisors and algorithmic traders, for example—are far more autonomous and omnipresent, accelerated in large by the increasing availability of data and advanced analytics technologies. The "prestige" associated with the use of AI and ML technologies in finance is reflected in initiatives like The AI Financial Summit, an invite-only conference that gathers C-level execs from across the financial industry sector and puts them in a room with AI experts and service providers. But a company doesn't necessarily need to be invited to a closed conference in order to apply or learn from emerging technologies in the industry.

There is a certain level of stigma that exists around using machine learning and location data in business applications, understandably due to risks inherent in exploitation of individual privacy. But if we look under the hood of society's daily web of interactions, we see that the location information economy—from GPS to radio signal based-triangulation to geo-tagged images and beyond—is now almost ubiquitous, from the moment we track our morning commute to the end-of-day search for healthy and convenient take-out for dinner.

With all the excitement and hype about AI that’s “just around the corner”—self-driving cars, instant machine translation, etc.—it can be difficult to see how AI is affecting the lives of regular people from moment to moment. What are examples of artificial intelligence that you're already using—right now?

Episode Summary: In many ways, AI and finance are made for each other. Machine learning and other techniques make it easier to identify patterns that might otherwise not be detected by the human eye, and finance is quantitative to begin with, so that it’s hard not to find traction. Financial firms have also invested heavily in AI in the past, and more are starting to tap into the financial applications of machine learning (ML) and deep learning. Artificial intelligence in stock trading certainly isn't a new phenomena, but access to it's capabilities has historically been rather limited to large firms.
This week, we’re joined by CEO and Co-founder of Kavout Alex Lu, whose company offers AI trading applications for enterprises and individuals. Lu speaks today about the kinds of patterns that traders now have access to in finance, and he gives examples of ways Kavout and other institutions are using artificial intelligence in stock trading to build better and more personalized products and services.