Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are playing an ever-more-significant role in finance and fund servicing. We sat down with one of our in-market experts in Luxembourg, Bardad Sambou, managing director of operations and client service for U.S. Bank – Luxembourg, to discuss some of the shifts he’s seeing from a technology standpoint there and elsewhere.
At the broadest level, the biggest trend I see is the democratization of AI technology. As much as there are risks associated with it, one can’t help but feel excited at the possibilities it’s opening for businesses – and ours is no different.
Now this is a worldwide trend. But, because of the nature of Luxembourg’s global, cross-border distribution position, we see a lot of opportunity and application here in this market. There are numerous ways this could enhance the analysis and management of client/investor onboarding documents and help generate more dynamic and customized reporting.
Data management is an area that could see the biggest benefit from AI. In our industry, there’s a lot of data that’s unstructured. There’s a lot of data that goes unused. And most importantly, there’s a lot of data that takes a lot of effort and energy to make usable.
As with any new technology and the buzz it generates, I also see a trend toward overusing AI and wanting to apply it to everything everywhere all at once. This tendency is understandable and to some extent necessary. As an industry, we keep pushing and exploring what it can do and what it can help us with, so as to strengthen our trust in its results.
That said, it’s important to keep our attention directed toward where AI can be best applied. Implementation isn’t cheap, so it’s critical to understand what you’re trying to solve – identifying the solution you need and not just the solution you want. You also have to keep in mind that automation through robotics remains an equally valid option.
At U.S. Bank, our team is deeply focused on testing, assessing and experimenting with different technologies: artificial Intelligence, machine learning, robotics, cloud-based solutions and more. But we don’t lose sight of the array of other automation solutions available as well.
The technologies I mentioned are tools that the entire industry is working on, but everyone approaches them a little differently.
The opportunities and challenges come in identifying which business processes to concentrate on – and how to prioritize and resource them. Then you also have to factor in the governance required to manage it all.
At U.S. Bank, we’re not just looking at being efficient and doing things faster or cheaper. We’re striving to be effective, first and foremost, and to deliver the best possible solutions and services.
For us, listening to our clients and to the market is key to achieving this. Their needs and feedback are paramount. And that’s what drives our ongoing pursuit to improve, innovate, explore new technologies and do the right thing.
When you have a dedicated and creative team, and you’re able to focus their efforts and your technology investments toward solutions that are directly connected to client needs – well that’s when you really make a difference and stand out. In another words, I believe in the efficiency of a focused approach versus attempting too much transformation on too many different fronts without specific, well-defined objectives.
AI is a game changer for every industry, but especially ours. It opens so many possibilities, and that in itself can be daunting. It can also generate pushback and resistance to change; we’re talking about a highly disruptive technology with a multitude of implications – from costs, to privacy, to data security, to even ethics.
In times like these, it’s important to have an experienced and trusted partner for support and guidance. Clients want more real-time information, more flexibility to customize data and better attuned client service teams with the tools and technology to make their jobs easier.
We’re able to provide clients in Luxembourg, Ireland and the U.S. with a wide array of in-house solutions. And our clients also benefit from open and ongoing dialogue with our in-market experts about the challenges they’re facing and the goals they want to achieve.
Ideas and solutions come from the ground up, so it’s a key part of our business model to maintain close relationships with clients to understand their needs and concerns. Our workforce excels at taking that information and innovating actionable solutions. What drives success for us is the simplification of processes and workflows and the seamless movement of information from clients to us and then back to them again.
Managing a large volume of data, structuring it and securing it are key. Scale, complexity, fragmentation, distribution, privacy controls and metadata issues are the biggest challenges facing service providers right now, and these all need to be addressed early on.
Another challenge is integration and systems compatibility – ensuring that data can flow and that systems are able to communicate. Legacy systems and their architecture add an additional level of complication to this. Replacing those systems, migrating parts of them and/or building on top of what already exists requires prompt analysis and decisions at both a strategic and tactical level.
We see AI as an additional solution to assist with this. It can help at all levels – from cleaning, cataloguing, governing, sharing and ultimately analyzing the data. Understanding the data and helping clients understand it too is fundamental to our offering as a service provider. Identifying behaviors, trends and patterns can help drive better decisions and improve the experience for all parties.
Here at U.S. Bank, we have several proof-of-concepts and active initiatives powered by AI. We’re currently evaluating how ChatGPT could help support our business, while also balancing the risk associated with that tool. We leverage AI tools for fraud, treasury management, wealth and investment services. And this year, our Investment Services team has been working on future use case analyses of AI and ChatGPT for driving efficiencies and creating unique product enhancements for our clients. In terms of concrete examples of how we’re using AI right now, we’re using it for document reading to extract relevant information and for audio transcription to support corporate secretarial services.
AI and automation are hot topics right now, but automation as a concept isn’t really something new. Automation is a journey that started long ago, and it’s one that will evolve with the fund services industry far into the future.
Technology, in its essence, is both an enabler and a disruptor. It helps us move forward, but it also presents us with decisions and uncertainty. And we move forward. And we face more decisions and uncertainty. And the journey continues.
AI opens a wider scope of opportunities and challenges than many other technologies. It’s no longer just about reducing human intervention on repetitive tasks. It’s about achieving intelligent machine decision-making for non-repetitive tasks as well – and so much more.
Data will remain the critical component, or commodity, that feeds both automation and AI. The more structured it is, the smoother the ride. So the secret is to keep exploring, to remain curious, and to keep asking the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ around everything we do.
We’re continuing to pay attention to the market trends and to our clients’ challenges to stay at the forefront of this journey. We’re flexible, and we’re able to adapt and adjust as needed within this fast-moving and dynamic ecosystem – one that doesn’t show signs of slowing.
It’s easy to get lost in the flurry of all the exciting and opportunity-rich innovation happening right now. For us, it’s all about staying focused, applying technology strategically and not losing track of our objectives.
For more information about how we can customize our services to help achieve your business goals, please visit our website or contact us.
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