The Vital Importance of AI Trust within Financial Services

In an era of escalating cyber threats, financial institutions are turning to cutting-edge technologies like AI to safeguard sensitive data and maintain customer confidence. 

AI has quickly emerged as a frontrunner in the digital transformation race, as it can offer a range of innovative solutions to security challenges and service optimisation within the global financial services sector. Its ability to enhance fraud detection and process large and complex documents has led the technology to transform the way that businesses operate and protect their data.

With this in mind, we spoke exclusively with Monica Hovsepian, Head of Worldwide Financial Services Industry Strategy at leading technology company OpenText. She shares her insights on how AI is reshaping the financial services landscape and highlights its myriad benefits.

As financial services continue to evolve in line with digital transformation, AI stands poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the industry's future.

How are you seeing AI changing the financial services landscape at the moment? Are there any trends/events in particular that have contributed? 

AI is significantly transforming the financial services landscape by automating processes, enhancing customer experiences and improving decision-making. Trends such as the rise of machine learning for fraud detection, AI-driven chatbots for personalised customer support and predictive analytics for investment strategies are gaining momentum. 

The increased availability of big data, advancements in computing power, and heightened competition from fintech have accelerated AI adoption in the sector. 

Additionally, regulatory pressures and the demand for operational efficiency have contributed to the rapid integration of AI into financial services. 

What are some of the benefits/challenges that AI technology can give the sector? 

AI technology brings significant benefits to the Financial Services sector, including enhanced efficiency through automation, improved accuracy in risk assessments, personalised customer experiences via AI-driven insights and faster, more secure fraud detection. It also enables predictive analytics for better decision-making in areas like investment and lending.

AI is there to support the employee – to elevate the human potential by delivering insights, knowledge and expedite results. However, challenges include the complexity of implementing AI systems, concerns around data privacy and security, regulatory compliance, and potential biases in AI models that can lead to unfair outcomes. 

Ensuring transparency and trust in AI decisions is also crucial for its broader acceptance in the sector. 

How can AI complement human efforts in financial services? 

By automating routine tasks like data entry, transaction processing, and compliance checks, freeing up professionals to focus on higher-value activities such as strategic decision-making and personalised client interactions. AI enhances human efforts in areas like risk assessment, fraud detection, lending decisions, claims processing and investment analysis by processing large data sets more quickly and accurately than humans alone.  

When considering that a mortgage application can be upwards of 800 pages of material, AI can assist the underwriter by summarising workspaces and documents, provide relevant information for the query, link to relevant documents, allow conversational interaction with content and answer specific questions with accuracy, resulting in quicker time to mortgage decisioning.   

AI-powered tools also provide real-time insights and recommendations, assisting financial professionals in making more informed decisions while improving customer service through chatbots and personalised communication. The collaboration between AI and humans ultimately drives greater efficiency, innovation and customer satisfaction in the financial services industry. 

With this in mind, why is AI trust essential in financial services? 

These institutions handle sensitive financial and personal data, making transparency, security and reliability critical. Customers need to trust that AI systems are accurate, unbiased and secure in order to feel confident in the decisions made or recommendations offered by these systems. 

Trustworthy AI also ensures that compliance with regulations is maintained, risks are properly managed and ethical standards are upheld. In a sector where customer relationships are built on trust, any misstep could lead to reputational damage, financial loss, or regulatory penalties. Therefore, establishing and maintaining AI trust is vital for fostering confidence, safeguarding customer data and ensuring the long-term success of AI in financial services. 

How can businesses best maintain that digital trust with clients/customers?  

By prioritising transparency, security and ethical practices in their use of technology. 

By consistently upholding these practices, businesses and FSIs can build and sustain digital trust, reinforcing customer confidence in their digital services. 

How is OpenText currently leveraging AI in its financial services department?  

OpenText leverages AI for Financial Services institutions through solutions and offerings to enhance operational efficiency, drive personalised customer experiences, enhance the developer experience, ensure security and bolster regulatory compliance. 

Through its AI-powered content management solutions, OpenText enables financial institutions to automate document processing, streamline underwriting workflows, and optimise customer interactions with predictive analytics. AI is also used to improve fraud detection, risk management and decision-making by analysing vast datasets in real-time.

Additionally, OpenText’s AI capabilities help FSIs ensure compliance with evolving regulations by identifying potential risks in documentation and automating audit processes, empowering institutions to deliver better, more secure services, in a timely manner. 

How does OpenText ensure data privacy and security when developing AI? 

OpenText ensures data privacy and security in developing AI solutions by adhering to stringent regulatory standards and implementing advanced security measures throughout the AI development lifecycle. This includes end-to-end encryption, secure data storage and robust access controls to safeguard sensitive information. 

We also prioritise ethical AI practices, ensuring that data used in AI models is anonymised or de-identified when possible and that all AI solutions comply with global data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. 

We are also proud to be the first signatory of Canada's Voluntary Code of Conduct on the Responsible Development and Management of Advanced Generative AI Systems. This is our pledge to uphold equity, accountability, safety and other vital guiding principles. 

Moving forward: How do you see AI benefitting OpenText clients and customers? 

AI will increasingly benefit OpenText clients and customers by enhancing automation, personalisation, security and decision-making capabilities. It will streamline operations, reduce manual workloads and accelerate time-to-insight, allowing FSIs to operate more efficiently. 

It will also enable highly personalised customer experiences by improving customer engagement and satisfaction, in addition to improving the employee experience by summarising workspaces and documents, providing relevant information for queries, enabling conversational interactions with content and answering specific questions. 

AI will also protect the institution from cyber threats by providing threat intelligence, behavioural threat hunting, threat detection and protection and automated security contextual insights.  

Additionally, AI-powered tools will help the OpenText financial services customers to better identify risks, optimise compliance efforts and foster innovation, empowering them to stay ahead in competitive markets. 

Overall, AI will drive greater agility, responsiveness and value across the Financial Services sector for OpenText customers.

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