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The future of financial services lies in technology – but leaders must also deal with risks

by Uma
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The future of financial services lies in technology – but leaders must also deal with risks

Kris Sharma Financial Services Industry Leader at Canonical

In recent years, the financial services sector has been at the forefront of digital transformation and has quickly acknowledged the significant benefits that technology offers, revolutionizing their operations to gain a deeper understanding of customers, enhance retention rates, expedite settlement processes, and optimize overall efficiency. As we look ahead, the industry is poised to continue its upward trajectory of innovation, as organizations, regardless of their size, explore avenues for further digitization. Among the myriad technologies on the horizon, three stand out: artificial intelligence and machine learning  (AI/ML), secure open source, and cloud computing. These transformative technologies are set to disrupt traditional business models, empowering financial institutions to redefine how they operate and usher in a new era of unprecedented opportunities.

According to research conducted by Snowflake, the financial industry is increasingly recognizing the urgency of migrating to the cloud to bolster cybersecurity (50.5%), enhance fraud detection capabilities (38.6%), and streamline claims management (33.8%). Open-source technologies play a pivotal role in empowering financial institutions to sustain their agility and competitive edge in an industry characterized by intense competition and saturation. By leveraging open-source solutions, these institutions gain the flexibility and freedom to customize and innovate their technology stack, driving rapid development and adaptability. The collaborative nature of open source fosters a vibrant ecosystem, facilitating knowledge sharing, accelerating the pace of innovation, and enabling financial institutions to stay ahead in an ever-evolving landscape.

Recent advancements in AI/ML applications within the financial services sector have sparked a wave of innovation, comparable in magnitude to the transformative impact of Internet banking and mobile platforms. This signifies a significant shift in the industry, presenting unprecedented opportunities to enhance operational efficiency, elevate customer experiences, and drive data-driven decision-making.  The potential of AI/ML to revolutionize financial services is poised to reshape the industry and unlock new growth opportunities.

Despite the significant benefits that AI, open source, and cloud computing offer, they are not without their challenges. Financial institutions must strive for innovation while proactively anticipating and mitigating potential issues such as cloud concentration risks and fraud. This proactive approach is crucial to safeguard both the financial institutions themselves and their valued customers.

Unlocking the Potential of AI/ML in Financial Services with MLOps

AI/ML technologies are playing a vital role in driving the digital transformation of banks by enhancing customer experiences, detecting and preventing fraud, improving risk management, automating processes, ensuring compliance, driving data-driven insights, and enabling predictive analytics. These capabilities enable banks to remain competitive, foster innovation, and deliver more efficient and personalized banking services to their customers.

AI/ML algorithms can identify patterns and anomalies in financial transactions, enabling banks to detect and prevent fraudulent activities. ML models can analyze vast amounts of financial data, market trends, and external factors to identify potential risks and predict outcomes. AI/ML automates manual and repetitive tasks in banking operations, increasing efficiency and reducing costs. For instance, AI-powered document processing systems can extract relevant information from various documents, such as loan applications or Know Your Customer (KYC) documents, accelerating the onboarding process.

Although AI/ML and data analytics offer unprecedented opportunities to business leaders in financial services, scaling and implementing these initiatives at scale poses significant challenges. This is where Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) step in as a critical function of ML engineering. MLOps focuses on streamlining the process of deploying, maintaining, and monitoring ML models in production. By fostering collaboration between data scientists, engineering, and IT operations teams, MLOps accelerates model development and production, leading to scalable and trustworthy AI solutions, particularly essential for financial services institutions.

Despite the progress made, banks have yet to fully realize the potential of AI/ML in areas like personalization. Challenges arise from inconsistent customer data and narrow-scoped ML models that lack data sharing. MLOps offers a solution by promoting collaboration between data scientists and operations teams. It enables banks to confidently leverage predictive insights for decision-making and develop personalized programs. By implementing MLOps practices, banks can build an integrated technology stack that orchestrates the insights loop, seamlessly connecting enterprise data to ML models and leveraging the outputs for tailored campaigns.

In recent years, AI/ML is revolutionizing the field of credit risk assessment, offering improved accuracy and efficiency compared to traditional methods. Machine learning algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data and identify patterns that traditional models may overlook. This enables financial institutions to make more informed credit decisions and mitigate risks. ML models continually improve their accuracy through iterative training. However, challenges still persist, such as the potential for biases within the data used to train AI and ML models. This issue carries particular sensitivity in financial services, where decisions can have profound real-world consequences. MLOps plays a crucial role in helping data scientists at financial institutions detect and mitigate biases. By ensuring models are built and tested using diverse and representative data sets, MLOps safeguards against biases and enhances the fairness and reliability of AI models in the financial domain. 

Understanding the risk of cloud concentration 

While the adoption of cloud technology has been embraced by some financial organizations, others have been slower in their uptake. Recent findings indicate that only 13% of financial services had migrated half or more of their IT infrastructure to the cloud. However, a significant shift is anticipated, with over half of these leaders expressing their intention to transition at least 50% of their workloads to the public cloud within the next five years.

For those operating in the cloud, it offers scalable resources, advanced infrastructure, and cost advantages by eliminating the need for extensive on-premises infrastructure and reducing operational expenses. 

For businesses that have yet to embark on their cloud journey, it is crucial to be mindful of the cloud concentration risk associated with relying solely on a single public cloud platform. This risk stems from the industry’s heavy dependence on a single cloud service provider to support critical banking and insurance services, as an outage in such a scenario can have far-reaching and potentially catastrophic consequences.

To mitigate these concerns, financial institutions need to embrace hybrid multi-cloud strategies. Adopting a hybrid multi-cloud approach allows financial institutions to maintain a unified and consistent approach to infrastructure management. Furthermore, leveraging multiple cloud providers enhances performance, boosts application resilience, and mitigates the risks associated with cloud concentration. In the event of an outage, infrastructure failure, or a major cyber attack, a multi-cloud architecture empowers financial institutions to seamlessly switch providers and safeguard data through backups. 

Thriving with secure open source 

Open source can play a crucial role in helping banks build lasting digital transformation by providing a foundation for collaborative and community-driven innovation. Open-source software allows banks to customize and tailor technology solutions to meet their specific needs. By having access to the source code, organizations can modify and extend the software to align with their unique requirements, workflows, and business processes. 

With open-source software, banks have full visibility into the underlying codebase. This transparency allows for thorough security audits, identification of vulnerabilities, and timely resolution of issues. Additionally, the large and diverse community of open-source software developers scrutinizing the code enhances security and reduces the risk of undetected flaws or malicious activities. Banks can leverage open-source software to design scalable and interoperable solutions that integrate easily with the wider existing application landscape. Open standards and APIs facilitate interoperability with other systems, enabling banks to leverage existing technologies and expand their digital capabilities quickly.

It is important to note that while open source provides numerous advantages and helps to accelerate innovation, banks should also consider factors such as governance, security policies, and the availability of skilled resources when embarking on a digital transformation journey with open source solutions.

According to a 2022 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis report, ”97% of codebases scanned by Synopsis contained open-source components and 81% contained at least one known open-source vulnerability”. It is crucial that banks realize that open source itself does not create business risk, but its mismanagement does. This was highlighted by the Log4j incident. The discovery of the Log4j vulnerability, known as Log4Shell, brings to the fore the need for organizations to use secure open-source software that is security patched, well maintained, and has enterprise support. As banks navigate the evolving landscape of technology, secure open-source solutions offer a powerful combination of flexibility, transparency, and robust security measures.

Embracing the digital era – transforming financial services for the future 

The financial services industry is undergoing a significant transformation driven by evolving customer expectations and the rapid advancement of digital technologies including AI/ML, open source, and cloud technologies. The industry is poised for further transformation, enabling businesses to gain agility, enhance data protection, and deliver personalized experiences to customers. However, it is crucial for financial organizations to recognize that alongside these advantages, there are inherent risks. By implementing appropriate strategies and allocating resources effectively, they can navigate these challenges to deliver innovative solutions at scale.  

 

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