Artificial Intelligence, Real Cost Reduction and Surprising Value
Financiers recognize the cost reduction that AI introduces.
More than a third of survey respondents said that AI led to operational efficiencies, and 20 percent said AI reduced the total cost of ownership in 2023.
AI offers improved computing power and workload portability for use across hybrid cloud infrastructures.
According to deMayo, “The traditional computing that’s in every bank’s data center will not run AI efficiently.” But creative tech solutions can support data needs: NVIDIA’s new GPU and software library helped lower the cost of inference by a factor of four, deMayo says. AI can also reduce costs by supporting workload portability for use across hybrid cloud infrastructures, enhancing customer service, and building stronger fraud detection and prevention tools.
Unlocking value from investment in technology
AI can help IT leaders identify and derive value from their investment in technology. “There’s an opportunity to unlock value,” deMayo says, both across internal initiatives and in customer-facing endeavors.
Valuable Customer Relationship Cues
Nearly half of survey respondents (46 percent) report that AI has improved their customer experience. Accelerated large language models make chatbots more effective and less frustrating, increasing customer satisfaction.
“Banks have customers who are expecting the same kinds of experiences they get when they jump on their retail e-commerce experience,” deMayo says. “AI gives a very big set of capabilities to help banks deliver on that customer experience desire.” The loads of data that financial institutions handle can be put to more effective use with AI. “We’re helping them shift through mountains of social news, financial news and financial reports to discover patterns, trends and ideas that they can trade against so that they can deliver more value to their customers.”
How AI Can Help Resolve Talent Shortages
Many financial institutions are experiencing a labor shortage and are either spending time recruiting the most qualified AI experts or allocating resources to upskill current employees. But using AI technology to improve these labor challenges can help. “There’s an opportunity to leverage AI as a teacher that can teach at the pace of the individual,” deMayo says, potentially enabling cross-training and upskilling among current employees in addition to onboarding new workers. For example, large language models have the capacity to improve education in banking — for consumers as well as for employees. DeMayo points to algorithmic trading as a basic example of how financiers have long deployed tech to amplify results. “Financial institutions have a lot of smart people, and they’ve been using technology that enables them to offer their services for a very long time,” he says.
