If used well, artificial intelligence (AI) can increase productivity and profitability, especially in the financial sector, which already has a wealth of data that can be easily leveraged by AI.
It will not have escaped anyone’s notice that artificial intelligence is turning our lives upside down and will likely continue to change our habits in the long term. The financial sector is considered by many experts as an industrial revolution “is the preferred customer for AI after technology companies. These are the companies that will use it the most and benefit from it the most.” said Frédéric Genta, Interministerial Delegate for Attractiveness and the Digital Transition, yesterday at the Wealth-Tech Summit at One Monte-Carlo on the topic “Artificial Intelligence and Investments: The New Frontiers of Finance.”
Advertisement
Moderated by Patricia Cressot, President and Co-Founder of Monaco Women in Finance (MWF), as moderator, a number of guests took the floor, including Robert Laure, President of the AMAF; Jean-Philippe Desbiolles, VP & Managing Director Financial Services and Generative AI Leader EMEA at IBM; Charles Thurat, Data & AI Platform Manager/Project Director at BNP Paribas Wealth Management; Jean-Yves Oufrani, Cybersecurity & AI Manager at MVE and Simon Weinberger, PhD, Managing Director, EMEA Head of Portfolio Management for Systematic Active Equity at BlackRock
AI: a game-changer for the financial world
In November 2022, the arrival of ChatGPT revolutionized the way we work. After the first month, a million users had used it. Two months later this number had risen to 100 million.
While technology promises greater productivity and profitability in a number of sectors, especially the financial sector, the shift comes with a “Risk free,” as Robert Laure noted. These include potentially discriminatory biases during processing, opacity that can create dependency, financial risks and cybersecurity risks.
Towards a probabilistic future
Jean-Philippe Desbiolles believes that the arrival of AI marks a change of era “from a deterministic world to a probabilistic world.” A machine, like a human, learns and forms results based on its knowledge, with a certain degree of uncertainty.
This is why Desbiolles believes that “Man must remain at the center of the circle” to guide and guide AI’s decisions. While significant progress has been made in governance and ethics, “There is still a way to go.”
“AI is like surfing. You can’t stop a wave, you have to learn to surf it.” explains the IBM expert. According to him, AI should not only be seen as a tool, but also as a real tool “co-worker” work together to maximize results.
These are the early days of AI and Desbiolles already sees new models on the way. Although we are only in the conversational AI phase today, the next phase will emerge “agentic.” AI will collaborate with other agents to create a service focused on action and not just interaction. In the medium term, quantum computing will take over and push binarity and mathematics aside.
AI, an unusual ‘colleague’ in the financial world that proves to be very useful
AI is flourishing in the banking sector. Charles Thurat sees a number of applications for this, including freeing up time for the banker, who can then concentrate more on the relationship they have with their customers. The AI is assigned the simplest and most tedious tasks, such as listening to conversations to identify the commands to be performed.
AI is also an exceptional knowledge base that you can integrate into your business. Here too, as a super colleague, it can inform employees about the company’s rules, so that they always comply with the rules, which is also what the compliance software of the Monegasque company MVE offers.
BlackRock’s Simon Weinberg highlighted how AI, especially generative AI, can do that ‘to revolutionize investment’ processing massive amounts of data in seconds instead of days.
A shared future
The role of AI in finance is not just to automate repetitive tasks. As Frédéric Genta explained, artificial intelligence is the result of a huge accumulation of data, and reflects the strategies of different countries: technological sovereignty for the United States, data protection for Europe, planning for China.
Monaco, with its agility as a small country, would like to use this revolution to its advantage. “Place some bets!” urges the Interministerial Delegate for Attractiveness and Digital Transition.
