Embracing GenAI: The Future of Banking and Finance at Fibabanka
GenAI excites us all
The momentum gained by genAI in 2022 and 2023 is truly exciting and opens up new possibilities across various sectors. What sets GenAI apart from fundamental models is its ability to generate original content based on learned patterns, leveraging pre-trained models for diverse tasks. This grants us unique new competencies, particularly in extracting insights, creating content, and engaging in human-like interactions. GenAI’s personalized conversational skills, automatic content generation, text analysis, and interaction summarization are poised to make an impact across industries, especially in sales and customer support. Companies selling these technologies are currently trying to develop their own GenAI capabilities and integrate them into their solution portfolios. Code assistants have also started to become prevalent, whether in technology firms or software development across different sectors. With the capabilities of code assistants, we can enhance code quality and simplify the coding process, potentially designing a complete software life cycle from development request to end product in the future. While this brings excitement, it may also evoke some apprehension, particularly among software developers, especially the ones who are in the beginning of their career. You may have heard Devin, The first AI software engineer.
Banking and Finance Sector
The banking and finance sectors are renowned for their adeptness in utilizing technology and are often early adopters of new innovations. I anticipate that we will soon see the initial applications of genAI within the financial sector. According to Gartner’s 2023 research, over 60 percent of bank executives report that their companies have either increased their investments in artificial intelligence or have plans to do so within the next 12 months. It is expected that efficiency in banks will increase with genAI, especially in sales and software development areas. According to a study by McKinsey, around seventy percent of the workforce in banks will be impacted by one of the competencies that come with genAI. It is predicted that the most prominent competence will be on the side of advisors working on the front-end.
What steps are we taking in response to these developments?
As Fibabanka, we advocate for a cautious approach to usage, particularly in areas involving external customer interaction, and have begun implementing genAI primarily for in-house scenarios. While drawing our roadmap, we started by establishing a team to coordinate genAI efforts within the organization to determine usage scenarios. As an initial step, we disseminated information within the organization regarding the competencies that come with genAI and its potential applications. After that, we solicited feedback from internal customers to pinpoint areas where genAI could address organizational needs. We prioritized scenarios by evaluating these needs and the efforts to achieve the solutions from different dimensions. For each scenario we prioritized and started with, we defined success criteria and established metrics for measurement. We started with scenarios such as summarizing our customers’ conversations with call center representatives and providing advice to call center representatives during the conversation with the customer. Additionally, we worked on and implemented the buddy system for new hires, assistant bots related to human resources and technology, which do not touch external customers at all, but which we primarily need within the organization. We want to be able to customize our bots not only according to topics, but also so that they can give appropriate answers to the user they are communicating with. We have also introduced code assistants within our software teams with the goal of leveraging these assistants to learn from our own code repository, to write software that complies with our architectural standards, and to support different technologies. Looking ahead, our aim is to expand the use of genAI to encompass customer acquisition processes and personalization, such as generation of personalized marketing content for sales.
What should CIOs do?
As developments unfold rapidly, CIOs must grasp the potential risks and the business value that new GenAI-powered solutions will add to their organizations. It is crucial to assess whether the technical requirements of the solution produced can be met by the organization and whether the organization is ready for this solution. However, a correct adaptation process is also essential. The failure of a new technology in the adaptation phase can make the subsequent process more difficult. For this reason, users need to be informed, their expectations must be managed, and their adaptation must be ensured. Like with any new technology, rumors of increased productivity carry the risk of creating unrealistic expectations in the short term. Another critical consideration is data quality and security. There is a need to establish effective processes to ensure the accuracy, security, and currency of the data we use. Many companies do not want to give their confidential documents to ChatGPT. Every new technology also brings new security vulnerabilities. We will now have to consider some security vulnerabilities that we have not considered before. It seems inevitable that most of the technology investments in the coming period will be in security. In summary, organizations need to plan how to adapt this new technology to their existing systems in a way that is secure reliable and provides the most added value. We anticipate an exciting journey ahead, during which we’ll collaborate closely with our business partners and customers, learning and growing together along the way.
