Artificial intelligence: a game-changer for the financial sector
Frederic Genta, Interministerial Delegate for Attractiveness and Digital Transition © Stéphane Danna / Communication Department
Used well, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can boost productivity and profitability, particularly in the finance sector, which already has a wealth of data that can easily be leveraged by AI.
It will not have escaped anyone’s notice that artificial intelligence is turning our lives upside down and is likely to continue changing our habits for the long term. Considered an industrial revolution by many experts , the finance sector “is the preferred customer for AI after tech companies. These are the companies that will use it the most and benefit the most from it,” said Frédéric Genta, Interministerial Delegate for Attractiveness and the Digital Transition, at yesterday’s Wealth-Tech Summit at One Monte-Carlo on the subject of “Artificial intelligence and investment: finance’s new frontiers.”
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With Patricia Cressot, President and co-founder of Monaco Women in Finance (MWF) a moderator, a number of guests took the floor, including Robert Laure, President of the AMAF; Jean-Philippe Desbiolles, VP & Managing Director Financial Services and Generative AI Leader EMEA at IBM ; Charles Thurat, Data & AI platform manager/ Project Director at BNP Paribas Wealth Management; Jean-Yves Oufrani, Cybersecurity & AI Manager at MVE and Simon Weinberger, PhD, Managing Director, EMEA Head of Portfolio Management for Systematic Active Equity at BlackRock
AI: a game-changer for finance
In November 2022, the arrival of ChatGPT revolutionised how we work. After the first month, a million users had used it. Two months later, the number had risen to 100 million.
While the technology promises greater productivity and profitability in a number of sectors, particularly the financial sector, the shift comes with a “raft of risks,” as Robert Laure pointed out. These include potentially discriminatory biases during processing, opacity that might create dependency, financial risks and cybersecurity risks.
Towards a probabilistic future
Jean-Philippe Desbiolles believes the arrival of AI means a change of era “from a deterministic world to a probabilistic world.” A machine, like a human being, learns and forms results from its knowledge, with a measure of uncertainty.
This is why Desbiolles believes that “human beings must remain at the centre of the loop” to supervise and guide AI’s decisions. Although considerable progress has been made in terms of governance and ethics, “there is still some way to go.”
“AI is like surfing. You can’t stop a wave, you have to learn to surf on it,” explains the IBM expert. In his view, AI should be seen not just as a tool, but as a genuine “colleague” to work alongside in order to maximise results.
These are the early days of AI, and Desbiolles already sees new models down the line. While today we are only at the stage of conversational AI, the next stage will be “agentic.” AI will work with other agents to create a service with a view to action and not just interaction. In the medium term, quantum computing will take over and push binarity and mathematics aside.
AI, an unusual “colleague” in finance who is proving very useful
AI is flourishing in the banking sector. Charles Thurat sees a number of applications for this, including freeing up time for banker, who will then be able to concentrate more on the relationship they have with their customers. The AI is assigned the simplest and most tedious tasks, such as listening to conversations to identify the orders to be carried out.
AI is also an exceptional knowledgebase to bring on board in your business. Here again, like a super-colleague, it can inform employees of the company’s rules so that they are always in compliance, which is in fact what the compliance software from the Monegasque company MVE offers.
BlackRock’s Simon Weinberg emphasised how AI, particularly generative AI, can “revolutionise investment,” processing huge amounts of data in seconds instead of days.
A collaborative future
The role of AI in finance is not just automating repetitive tasks. As Frédéric Genta explained, artificial intelligence is the result of a massive accumulation of data, and reflects the strategies of different countries: technological sovereignty for the United States, data protection for Europe, planning for China.
Monaco, with its agility as a small country, would like to use this revolution to its advantage. “Place a few bets!” urges the Interministerial Delegate for Attractiveness and Digital Transition.