Over the next 12 months, more than 80% of businesses intend to find out more about Generative AI technology and the opportunities it can bring. This finding is from a report published by Accenture, which also found that 98% of global executives agree that AI foundation models will play an important role in their organisations’ strategies in the next 3 to 5 years. It makes sense. After all, this emerging technology is opening up a world of possibilities.

While artificial intelligence (AI) itself is not new, the machine learning algorithms that power tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, have reached new heights and their uses are just being realised. With these new tools around, people are starting to ask: What do we need to change in the way we do business?

AI in the financial services
Financial Services is a data intensive industry, with vast amounts of data and insights particularly in Banking and Insurance. It’s no surprise to see financial services the leading industry sector in Artificial Intelligence per a report from the Economist on early adopters of AI in corporate America.

The experience with AI gives financial services a head-start in understanding the potential for generative AI both opportunities and risks. Opportunities to better serve customers, reduce costs and meet compliance requirements, but also risks around how data is used and responsible usage of the tools. A clear framework is needed to best mitigate these risks.

While Gen AI tools currently offer ‘broad’ applications, it won’t be long until the market includes ‘foundational models’ – pre-trained for different sectors, and offering a variety of choices for balancing size, transparency, versatility and performance. Once in place, these Gen AI will allow you to move your company levers of:

• boosting productivity
• unleashing creativity
• optimising costs
• offering equal opportunities

Already, we are seeing examples of companies using Gen AI tools to create hyper-personalised marketing that engages with customers in different ways depending on their behaviours. Synthetic data generation is being used to capture emerging trends, and Gen AI tools can digitally validate and enter data into company software.

Generating better outcomes with AI
Imagine you are an insurance provider. One of the most frequent objections you hear from your clients is about the amount of paperwork they need to fill out. Now, imagine that instead of filling out a form, your customer could have a conversation with an AI avatar who would glean the necessary information and fill in the form for your customer to check over. The Gen AI tool simply uses the information you already have on file and then asks your customer questions to fill in the gaps as needed. In a moment that matters and heightened stress for the customer, this would remove significant friction from the customer experience.

Likewise, imagine you have a new starter working in your call centre. This agent is ready to engage with your customers but isn’t sure where to find all the information they might need. Generative AI can be programmed to search your company documents and to bring up relevant information within a defined scope, so a service representative can rely on these details. Each answer generated by the AI can be validated by the service representative by looking at the source of the information, and then be shared with the customer, either as a link or verbatim. This improves first call resolution for the customer with accuracy and improves the experience for the agent through aiding their knowledge uplift and productivity.

A third example is for workers who find that email correspondence takes up a large portion of their day, Gen AI can ease the burden by drafting emails with options of the user. For example, if a client emails to ask for a specific question, the AI tool can draft a response with options to either acknowledge with empathy, create a report, or respond back with a resolution with reference to a specific section of the PDS. Again, improving the experience for the both the customer and the knowledge worker.

How to get started with Gen AI
To fully embrace and take advantage of the generative AI era, there are six recommended adoption essentials. These are:

1. Dive-in with a business-driven mindset: Understand how your business structure will benefit from Gen AI, and how you might break down silos to create the collaboration needed for innovation.

2. Take a people-first approach: What are the tasks that your employees or customers find menial and time-consuming? Is this something a Gen AI tool could perform, or assist with?

3. Get your proprietary data ready: No matter what you are doing, the output will only ever be as good as what you are putting in. If you want a Gen AI tool to use your documents to provide information, then best ensure those documents are up to scratch.

4. Invest in sustainable tech foundation: Consider your requirements for infrastructure, architecture, operating models, and governance structure to range from support of experimentation to scale in into Production. Do make sure you understand how these will be challenged in the future.

5. Accelerate eco system innovation: As the industry matures, consider how quickly you will need to move to keep learning, and how you can leverage industry best practices and insights offered by ecosystem partners, such as big tech players, start-ups, professional services firms, and academic institutions.

6. Leverage your responsible AI: Trust is a key factor with customers in Financial Services. Before integrating any Gen AI technology, do your due diligence and assess the risks and put a mitigation plan in place. Embed ongoing controls for assessing this risk, and promote responsible AI principles and approaches throughout the business.

Get going
Implementing and customising Gen AI tools in your business requires the same responsible consideration and weighing up as bringing in any other major change to your company. These tools will fundamentally change the way the financial service industry is shaped, so it pays to consider how and where you can best take advantage of this new opportunity.

For more information and to understand how Avanade can help your company take advantage of the opportunities of Gen AI and ChatGPT contact us.