AI in Financial Services Podcast

This week, we speak with Mark Gazit, CEO of Thetaray, an AI vendor that focuses on financial fraud and anti-money laundering. Mark speaks with us from a vendor perspective about what kind of culture a bank has when it adopts AI the right way and what kind of culture it has when it adopts AI the wrong way. Mark also doubles down on the idea that the culture of innovation needs to be top-down, coming from the leadership team.

When banks, financial services companies, and even AI vendors servicing the banking landscape look to innovate in how they improve their customer experience, it's almost never because they want to service their most valuable customers today. It's almost always driven by what they know the next generation is going to expect. Whenever we do work for our clients, Millenials are almost always on the tip of their tongues. This week, we speak with Michelle Scarborough, Managing Partner of Strategic Investments and Women in Tech at BDC. from the perspective of both a banker and an investor about what innovation means for Millenials, as well as how banks can enable the innovation that will attract and retain this new generation of digital citizen.

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.