AI in Financial Services Podcast

This month's theme is the culture of innovation within banks. When we did our AI in banking Vendor Scorecard and Capability Map report and we asked bankers what the biggest barrier to AI adoption in banking was, the number one response was the lack of a culture of innovation within banks. And the question is: how do we change that? How do we cultivate that culture? In this episode, we interview Josephine Baliah, former Head of Client Experience Design at FirstRand Group, about having leadership that steps behind innovation. She talks about what the leadership can do and where it can be hired from.

This is the final episode of our September series on Strategic Recommendations for Bankers. My job this week is to connect the dots between some of the insights we got from our interviewees this month. This includes one common thread across interviews: banks have an underlying fear of the FinTechs popping up everywhere and eating market share.

This week, we speak with With Sebastien de Brouwer, Chief Policy Officer at the European Banking Federation, about where banking leaders should be focused when it comes to AI in banking. Sebastien discusses which areas of banking—customer experience, legal risk, positioning—banks might latch onto when allocating budget for AI.  

Our guest this week is Nishant Chandra, PhD and Senior Director of Data Products at Visa. Nishant speaks with us about how banks can pivot to play to their strengths in a future where the technology landscape is shifting under their feet. He uses some good examples from Apple and GE that can help banking leaders think through how their culture can change to make AI a positive and not a negative.

This week, we spoke to another of our research advisors: Lee Smallwood, COO of Markets and Securities for Citi North America. Lee speaks with us about the dynamics of AI talent: finding the right talent and growing the right talent. How can a bank attract the right young people, train the right people within their organization, and martial them to success with AI in the future? How does a bank compete with Google, Facebook, and other AI-focused giants for AI talent? We answer these questions in this week's interview.

This month we focus on strategic recommendations for AI in banking. We're bringing back our research advisors for our AI in Banking Vendor Scorecard and Capability Map report, and this week, we speak with Ian Wilson, former Head of AI at HSBC. Wilson shares some of his thoughts as to what bankers should be thinking about when it comes to AI. Specifically: 1. Why is all the investment and attention around AI focused on risk? 2. What banking leaders should do to prepare for when that emphasis shifts away from risk.

It's the final episode of our month-long series on AI for the customer experience in banking. This week, Emerj CEO Daniel Faggella breaks down the insights from this month's interviews and colors them with data from our AI in Banking Vendor Scorecard and Capability Map report. In this episode, Daniel draws a picture about what the data says about AI for customer-facing applications in banking and barriers to adoption for AI in customer service.

This week we're joined by Sasha Caskey, the CTO of Kasisto. Kasisto is the highest-rated conversational interface vendor in our AI in Banking Vendor Scorecard and Capability Map report. Caskey discusses the future of where conversational interfaces fit into banking, including the automation of repetitive tasks. She also talks about the challenges of personal assistance, and how the real revolution in terms of market share may not come from established banks, but entirely digital banks and entirely digital currencies.

This week, we speak with Sindhu Joseph, CEO at CogniCor. She drops a quote in this interview that I really love and that I think hits on this month's theme well: "People don't need banks. They need banking." Joseph discusses how banks will have to transform to meet consumer expectations that are set by big tech. She talks about how one could hypothetically build a bank for 10% of the cost that banks run on today, and what that means for large banks. Finally, Joseph talks about how the banking workforce will change in response to artificial intelligence. For more on how AI is transforming banking, download the Executive Summary Brief of our AI in Banking Vendor Landscape at Capability Map.

The theme for the entire month is AI for the customer experience in banking. In this episode, we speak with Yinglian Xie, CEO at Datavisor. Xie sheds light on how users will expect to have "zero-step" authentication, the "friction-free" future of banking. Xie paints a picture about how the experience consumers have with big tech (such as a Facebook app) can be transferred into banking. She gives a sense for how backend data can have a strong effect on how well banks can serve customers on the front end. Xie also talks about the value of new data sources as banks shift into the digital world.