What is AI in Finance? A Comprehensive Guide

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The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in finance makes it possible for financial institutions to implement emerging technologies like machine learning to streamline, automate, and improve operations. In the financial sector, AI can facilitate high-frequency, predictive trading, manage risk with sophisticated credit scoring, detect fraud, analyze markets, and personalize banking services. Here’s what you need to know.

How is AI Used in Finance?

AI can be used in financial industries to solve a wide range of real-world challenges, from detecting anomalies and analyzing financial trends and patterns to forecasting future financial outcomes. AI and its related technologies increase productivity and improve the accuracy and reliability of financial transactions. Here’s a look at some of the most common uses of AI in finance:

• Customer Engagement: Voice-activated banking uses AI-driven speech recognition to improve client interactions, allowing customers to complete transactions or find support without manual input. Call center operations automated by speech recognition and chatbots can also improve customer service and reduce idle times.
• Sentiment Analysis: Sentiment analysis—determining customer sentiment or opinions from text data—can be used to analyze customer calls for signs of financial distress using a variety of natural language processing (NLP) tools.
• Fraud Prevention and Risk Assessment: AI models can detect unexpected trends or outliers in financial data to prevent fraud, assess risk, and maintain data integrity. Image recognition algorithms can also use visual data like scanned checks and ID cards to extract important information to help detect fraud, automate verification, and speed up document handling.
• Personalized Banking Services: AI-powered recommendation systems provide tailored financial products, such as investment alternatives and insurance policies, based on user behavior toward financial industries’ websites and social media as well as their users’ potential interests. Customized recommendations from these technologies enhance customer engagement and can drive revenue growth for financial institutions.
• Automated Document Processing: By automating document extraction, document classification, and such manual and tedious tasks as loan approvals, compliance checks, and contract management, AI improves efficiency and lessens human errors.
• Customer Service: Conversational chatbots can handle customer inquiries, resolve issues, and provide tailored assistance around the clock to enhance customer satisfaction, lower operational expenses, and free up time.
• Data Analytics: AI algorithms can analyze historical financial data to identify trends, forecast market movements, and optimize investment strategies. Algorithms use sophisticated techniques like regression analysis to understand the relationship between financial variables.
• Market Forecasting: Predictive models analyze historical data to forecast stock prices, market movements, and credit defaults. These models improve over time as more data is collected, benefiting investors, financial institutions, and businesses by delivering better projections and improving decision-making.
• Cybersecurity: AI detects and prevents cyberthreats to protect customer data by examining patterns for signs of an attack. Automated response systems provide for real-time threat mitigation by isolating impacted areas and neutralizing threats.
• Stress-Testing: Generative adversarial networks (GANs) and variational autoencoders (VAEs) can produce synthetic data that can be used to stress-test financial models or simulate scenarios to help institutions plan for different market conditions and evaluate the effectiveness of their strategies.

3 Challenges of AI in Finance

While AI may enable financial institutions to provide better service and reduce manual tasks, there are still challenges to consider and address, including data privacy, bias, and quality concerns.

Data Privacy and Regulatory Concerns

In the U.S., legislation such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act requires financial organizations to protect consumers’ personal data. Employing AI, such as chatbots, to access personal information raises data privacy concerns. To avoid breaches, organizations must publicly declare their data privacy policies.

Global regulatory organizations are addressing AI deployment in financial services to preserve the system and stimulate innovation. The Bletchley Declaration, published by countries in attendance at the global AI Safety Summit in 2023, emphasized the value of safe and responsible AI practices, for example. A recent U.S. Executive Order on AI outlines recommended practices for handling AI-related cybersecurity concerns, while the European Union’s AI Act categorizes AI technology based on risk and prioritizes consumer protection.

Read our guide to data governance to learn more about compliance.

Bias in Algorithms

Currently, artificial intelligence models must be trained on existing datasets. Unfortunately, it’s common for AI models to undergo training using biased datasets that may underrepresent certain groups of people. This results in AI tools exhibiting bias too.

In finance, bias can result in serious consequences for consumers. For example, credit risk assessments completed using a biased AI model may keep an individual from securing a loan they’re qualified for, simply based on their demographics. For the customer, this may be detrimental to their livelihood.

Data Quality Issues

According to many industry experts, a key factor hindering the adoption of AI is data complexity. Data comes in all shapes and sizes and can be difficult to manage. This is especially true within the finance industry. The complexities of data can lead to subpar quality. Incorrect data can lead to models that make incorrect assumptions, resulting in organizations making uninformed decisions.

These decisions can directly harm the financial well-being of their customers. This issue is exacerbated by the lack of data science and AI professionals within organizations. Many companies are finding that a lack of AI skills, expertise, and knowledge is a hindrance to AI adoption.

3 Key Companies Using AI in Finance

The use of AI has drastically revolutionized the financial business, allowing financial analysts to make better-educated decisions and provide excellent service to their clients. Companies like Enova, Workiva, and Trumid have been at the forefront of this digital transformation, using AI to optimize different parts of finance.

Enova

Enova International is a financial services company that offers loans and funding to over 9 million customers, including small enterprises and people who are neglected by traditional banks. It employs cutting-edge internet platforms, analytics, and machine learning algorithms to evaluate credit risk, detect fraudulent activity, and deliver consumer insights. Enova’s data-driven tactics maximize credit trading by combining agile technology with market understanding. The company’s AI-powered analytics enable it to learn client preferences, personalize offerings, and improve user experiences.

Workiva

Workiva is a financial technology firm that aspires to create a future trading network by combining agile technology, industry experience, and innovative product design by using generative AI, which generates text and conducts research, for reporting and assurance to improve productivity and data security. Its technology uses AI algorithms to automate financial reporting operations, and natural language processing (NLP) enhances document management, compliance, and regulatory reporting by extracting insights from unstructured text data. It also employs predictive analytics to anticipate financial trends and improve resource allocation.

Trumid

Trumid is a financial technology business that specializes in the corporate bond market. It provides an electronic trading platform with thousands of bonds available for purchase or sale, as well as numerous trading protocols and execution solutions. Trumid uses AI algorithms for bond trading and assessing market data, liquidity, and historical trends to make deals at the best pricing. It also employs market sentiment data to guide trading techniques and optimize bond portfolios, balancing risk and reward depending on individual preferences and market conditions.

3 AI in Finance Courses to Consider

The incorporation of AI into the banking industry is changing the way financial research, trading, and risk management are done. There are several extensive courses available to assist professionals and hobbyists in understanding the practical uses of artificial intelligence in finance. These courses cover a variety of AI approaches and technologies specifically designed for financial applications.

AI for Finance, Packt Publishing

Packt Publishing offers this AI for Finance course, which focuses on the practical applications of AI in the financial industry. It dives into numerous AI approaches and technologies that may help with financial research, trading strategies, risk management, and more. It includes an overview of AI’s influence on finance, machine learning approaches for financial modeling, the use of AI in algorithmic trading, risk management, fraud detection, and real-world examples. Intended for financial experts, data scientists, and anybody interested in using AI in the finance industry, it costs $10 on Udemy.

AI Applications in Marketing and Finance, University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania’s AI Applications in Marketing and Finance course focuses on the integration of AI, marketing, and finance, offering insights into how AI may influence decision-making and strategy. The course covers AI-driven consumer behavior analysis, predictive analytics, and AI applications in financial services. It also discusses ethical issues in AI use. The target audience consists of business executives, marketers, financial specialists, and students who use AI in their jobs. This course is available at Coursera and is included in the $59 monthly subscription cost for Coursera.

AI in Finance Specialization, CFTE

The Center of Finance, Technology, and Entrepreneurship (CFTE) offers an AI in Finance Specialization, which focuses on the use of AI in various financial industries. The program includes AI technologies in banking, insurance, and wealth management, data science for finance professionals, developing AI models for financial applications, and regulatory and ethical issues of AI in finance. The specialty is aimed at finance professionals, fintech entrepreneurs, and anybody interested in the changing finance and technology sector and costs $779.

Bottom Line: The Future of AI in Finance

AI is likely to transform the financial industry, with banking at the forefront. AI will improve analysis, integration, and business transformation as finance teams collaborate across enterprises to exchange insights and generate value. Generative AI will play an important role in corporate transformation by improving key processes and efficiency and providing individualized client engagement, tailored offerings, and effective data exploitation.

AI-driven advances are predicted to save banks up to $487 billion by the end of 2024, but ethical issues, regulatory hurdles, and responsible use will continue to be concerns as the industry faces the future.

Learn more about the step-by-step process of How to Train an AI Model to make accurate and reliable financial predictions.