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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
If you are a subscriber to Finovate Weekly, our LinkedIn-based newsletter of top stories from the Finovate blog, then you’ve already heard the news. But if not, then we’re thrilled to share it with you right here today: FinovateEurope2025 will feature a full, 32-company roster at our upcoming fintech conference in London, on 25-26 February.
“Our FinovateEurope conference will feature a diverse lineup of startup companies,” Finovate VP and Demo Director Heather Stowell said. “A key commonality among them is AI. But expect to see a number of different AI and automation use cases nested within core banking, wealth management, payments, fraud, and compliance.”
Finovate’s signature, live fintech demonstrations continue to be a much-imitated hallmark of Finovate conferences. With only seven minutes at their disposal and a hard and fast “no videos, no slides” rule, Finovate’s live demos are a unique opportunity for innovative fintechs and financial services companies to show — not tell — our audience of professionals exactly how their innovations help banks and other businesses solve critical problems, grow revenues, and access new markets and customers.
“This is an exciting year for demos at Finovate,” Stowell added. “Over 80% of the FinovateEurope demoing companies are less than five years old and are demoing at Finovate for the first time. We’re looking forward to seeing their latest innovations live on stage.”
To learn more about the companies that will be demoing at FinovateEurope this month, Finovate’s Sneak Peek series is a great place to start. Find out about the challenges being solved, key features, what businesses stand to benefit from their innovations, and more.
This Friday is your last chance to take advantage of early-bird savings of up to£200.00 when you register to attend FinovateEurope. Don’t delay! Visit our FinovateEurope hub today and save your spot!
Its 2025, and while the concept of embedded finance is not new, it continues to evolve, offering fresh opportunities for growth. Embedded finance is making it easier for consumers and businesses to interact with financial services companies by helping to streamline payments, offer in-app credit, and provide insurance offerings within apps. Ultimately, embedded finance is creating convenience and efficiency for both end users and the financial institutions themselves. However, as this sector matures, so too do the complexities surrounding competition, partnerships, and regulatory compliance.
At this year’s FinovateEurope event, taking place February 25 through 26 in London (book now to save!), we’re bringing in experts to discuss a wide range of pressing topics impacting banks and fintechs across the globe. And since embedded finance is still high on the list of hot trends this year, we are featuring two sessions dedicated to exploring opportunities in the space.
In our executive briefing titled, “How financial institutions can capture the huge opportunity of embedded finance & embedded banking in both retail & commercial banking,” the panel will look at opportunities for banks to expand their distribution footprint, the role of non-banks, competition, risk, and more. Panelists include:
Rashee Pandey, Associate Director of Membership and Growth at Innovate Finance
Sadeque Ahmed, Executive Director of Product Management at J.P. Morgan
Vivien Cheung, Head of Financial Partnerships EMEA at Airwallex
Andrew Crocombe, Head of Embedded Banking Propositions at ClearBank
Jose Luis Navarro, Head of Open Banking Strategy at BBVA
Jakob Pethick, Chief Commercial Officer at YouLend
We’ll also host Mbanq Co-Founder Vladimir Lounegov, as he delivers a special address titled, “Want to print money? How embedded finance turns brands into banks.” Lounegov will share how embedded finance empowers non-financial brands to generate new revenue streams, build customer loyalty, and gain a competitive edge by integrating financial services seamlessly into their products or services.
Don’t miss these sessions, and others, at FinovateEurope. Whether you’re a bank, fintech, analyst, or VC, this show will be your opportunity to learn from top thought leaders in the space and shape your 2025 strategy. Register today and be part of the action!
Advances in everything from digital engagement to AI have revolutionized banking and financial services. Unfortunately, these same technologies and innovations have spawned a new generation of financial criminals whose malicious activity can be launched from anywhere in the world and impact thousands, if not millions, of individuals.
What can the financial services industry do to better educate their clients about the challenge of financial crime? What tools and strategies are available to banks and other institutions to help them better protect themselves and their customers from fraudsters, cyberattacks, and other threats?
In our Power Panel on financial crime at FinovateEurope 2025 — How to harness anti-financial crime technology to meet the challenges of the digital era — we feature three experts on the topic of fighting fraud and financial crime in financial services. The panel will discuss current threats to banks and financial services companies, as well as the role of enabling technologies — including digital identity, biometric authentication, and AI — in helping businesses stay one step ahead of the fraudsters.
Our Power Panelists are:
Tom Littlechild, EMEA Senior Counsel for AML, Sanctions, and ABC (Financial Crime), Wells Fargo
Previously Santander UK’s dedicated financial crime attorney advising on AML sanctions, ABC, and criminal fraud matters, Littlechild is Wells Fargo’s EMEA Senior Counsel for AML, Sanctions, and ABC (Financial Crime).
Before joining the financial services industry, Littlechild was a specialist in white collar crime, investigations, and compliance at Ropes and Gray. LinkedIn.
Monica Carlesso, Business Platform Lead, ID & Authentication Platform, CIO Enabling Services, Lloyds Bank
A disruptor in the financial services industry with more than 15 years experience in digital product development in payments and banking, Carlesso is Business Platform Lead, ID & Authetication Platform, CIO Enabling Services, at Lloyds Bank.
Previously, Carlesso led mobile strategies and propositions in European financial services firms including Barclaycard and PosteMobile/PostePay. LinkedIn.
Chantelle Lamb, Fraud and Financial Crimes Systems Director, OakNorth
Lamb is the Fraud and Financial Crime Systems Director at OakNorth, which bills itself as the digital bank for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. She is a fraud prevention specialist with experience leading multiple fraud and financial crime teams across both retail and commercial financial services products.
Before joining OakNorth, Lamb was Head of Fraud at Vanquis Bank where she led the institution’s anti-money laundering and transaction monitoring efforts. LinkedIn.
Richard Neve, Managing Director & Partner, Cognito Media
Moderating the panel is Richard Neve. Managing Director & Partner at Cognito Media, Neve began his career as a daily newspaper journalist, and transitioned into financial services as a contributor to Financieel-Economisch Magazine (FEM) and a contributing editor to Banking Review.
Today, Neve manages complex and large international communications projects for fintechs and financial services companies. He works from the Amsterdam and Düsseldorf offices of Cognito. LinkedIn.
FinovateEurope is coming to London’s Intercontinental O2 on February 25 and 26 (grab your ticket here). Over the course of the two days, we will have a range of content loaded with fresh insights and new ideas that will help you stay on top of the latest trends.
With such a wealth of content, it is difficult to choose favorites. For me, however, there are two sessions that always stand out, the Investor All Stars and Analyst All Stars panels. These sessions gather some of the most influential minds and voices in financial services, and the group always addresses the most pressing topics in fintech.
Investor All Stars: Where is the smart money investing in fintech?
Why this session stands out Analysts will address critical questions about the current state of fintech funding, a hot topic given recent market turbulence. The speaker lineup of investors will offer insights on consolidation trends, wealthtech growth, and the potential for profitable fintechs to reshape the funding landscape.
Key questions to be answered
Which fintech sectors are still attracting strong investment?
What lessons can be learned from bubbles that have burst?
How can fintech startups navigate high interest rates and prepare for successful exits?
Takeaways for attendees The Investor All Star session will provide clarity for fintech founders and investors navigating a challenging funding environment. Understanding trends like digital asset adoption and profitability-focused growth through the lens of an investor can help guide your thinking on where to focus your time, efforts, and investment in the coming months.
Speakers
David Kelnar, Managing Director at Houlihan Lokey
Katherine Wilson, Senior Principal at Illuminate Financial
Robin Scher, Head of Fintech Investment at Lloyds Banking Group
Serhiy Tokarev, CoFounder and General Partner at Roosh
Analyst All Stars: How financial services have been changed forever
Why this session stands out This session is consistently one of Finovate’s most anticipated, and for good reason. Hearing from four top analysts in the space will help you bring fresh perspectives and actionable insights, no matter where you operate in the fintech and banking space.
Key questions to be answered
What can European banks learn from fintech innovation in Asia, Africa, and Latin America?
Why has open banking struggled in Europe while succeeding elsewhere?
What areas of financial wellness, inclusion, and literacy are ripe for innovation?
Takeaways for attendees Attendees can leverage analysts’ insights to understand global trends and discover opportunities for creating new revenue streams, a better customer experience, cost savings, and more. Both banks and fintechs will also learn from global case studies and benefit from actionable, practical recommendations.
Speakers
Philip Benton, Principal Analyst at Omdia
David Barton-Grimley, Fintech Strategy Director at 11:FS
Suraya Randawa, Head of Omnichannel Experience at Curinos
Both of these sessions are unmissable, so be sure to arrange your agenda to accommodate. All-access passes for the event are currently discounted; save by registering before rates increase!
We hear quite a bit about the role of venture capital in providing equity funding for fintech startups. But much less discussed is the role of venture debt. And while there is a widespread awareness of venture debut opportunities in the United States, fewer startups in the U.K. and Europe have traditionally taken advantage of it.
2025 may mark the year this changes. Our special Power Panel on Day One of FinovateEurope — Busting the Myths of Venture Debt, Innovations in Lending to Pre-Profit, High-Growth Companies. How to Decide If It Is Right for Your Startup? — will examine the impact of this shift, why it is happening now, and what startups need to know about how venture debt can work to help them secure the financing they need in order to grow.
How does venture debt work? What are the different options available to fintech startups? How does revenue-based financing differ from venture debt? How can companies decide whether or not venture debt is for them? These are some of the questions our Power Panel will address.
Erwin has nearly a decade of experience in venture debt. At NatWest, she is responsible for leading investments from origination to execution in high-growth, innovative companies, and supporting companies through the investment lifetime. LinkedIn.
Eliott Saba, Partner, Bootstrap Europe
Saba joined Bootstrap Europe in 2020 following a successful tenure at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) as Vice President. Currently, he leads Bootstrap’s Fintech and Software expansion, following the successful raising of its third fund. LinkedIn.
Manuel Costescu, Managing Director and Co-Head of Innovation Economy for EMEA, JP Morgan
Costescu co-heads the Innovation Economy team, serving EMEA’s fastest growing fintechs, SaaS companies, and e-commerce firms across a wide range of corporate banking solutions. Costescu was previously a member of the Romanian Parliament and State Secretary for Trade and Investment. LinkedIn.
Morgan Borer, Founder, Blair Public Relations
Moderating the panel is Morgan Borer. Borer is a veteran communications professional with more than a decade of strategic communications and public relations experience. She was previously Partner at Bevel, one of the most sought-after strategic communications firms for venture capital, private equity, tech founders and CEO in the U.S. and Europe. LinkedIn.
Tickets for FinovateEurope are available today! Book by January 24 and take advantage of big early-bird savings.
FinovateEurope 2025 takes place in London on February 25 and 26. Register to attend and save up to £400.
Now that 2025 is well underway, we’re starting to get a better picture of what this year’s FinovateEurope event will look like. Taking place in London on 25 and 26 February, the two-day event will feature live demos from 30+ companies, as well as panel discussions on the hottest fintech topics and keynote presentations from major industry thought leaders.
The headliner keynote address, titled Artificial intelligence – are we overestimating the short term impact & underestimating the long term impact?, will be delivered by Professor Tracey Follows. AI was quick to establish itself as a long-term trend line. Will everything in this decade be defined by AI? And what does this mean for financial services?
Follows, who Forbes listed as one of the Top 50 Female Futurists in the World, will address these questions and offer her thoughts into what else the future has in store for banks.
Follows teaches strategic foresight at London Business School to Senior Executive Leadership and Corporate Management programs globally. She is also Visiting Professor in Digital Futures and Identity at Staffordshire University. She writes a regular AI/Innovation column in Forbes and speaks regularly at AI conferences; her expertise is highly regarded. She is also the CEO of futures consultancy Futuremade, working with the world’s biggest global brands and businesses. Recent clients include Coca-Cola, Tesco, PZ Cussons, Snapchat, Google, Diageo, Sky, Lego, Farfetch, Conde Nast, BT, Telefonica, the IAB, Women’s Business Council and Virgin.
In an interview with Thinking Differently, when asked what a futurist does on a day-to-day basis, Follows said that she is always on the lookout for signals of change. She said that she spends a lot of time at the frontiers of technologies, art, and science.
Follows describes herself as an “anxious optimist” because she is optimistic about the future, but she is anxious that situations might not always turn out to meet the optimistic expectations.
From the continued relevance of paper checks to the rapid growth of digital technology, payments continues to be one of the most fascinating — and important — areas in fintech.
In this week’s Streamly interview, William Mills, CEO of the William Mills Agency, talks with Kevin Brown, CMO and Head of Corporate Development for Onbe. The two men discuss a variety of key issues in the payments world, including the potential for AI to revolutionize payment systems and the future of cross-border payments.
“One of the very prevalent modalities, or payment instruments, that still exist are paper-based checks. We did research with the team at Oliver Wyman and, in 2023, there were still 1.7 trillion dollars of paper check or cash-based B2C payments. A huge amount of paper that’s out there. Checks are dated, not a great customer experience, require action on behalf of the consumer and they’re really expensive to corporate clients … As an industry, we have a huge opportunity to still alleviate a significant amount of pain, both for the ultimate enterprises and then their consumers and recipients, just by the doing away of paper checks.”
Onbe manages and modernizes consumer and workforce disbursements for corporate customers. The company’s technology platform powers a suite of turnkey managed disbursement solutions that enable its customers to outsource their entire B2C disbursement operations. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Onbe was founded in 1996. Bala Janakiraman Iyer is CEO.
In his role at Onbe, Kevin Brown leads marketing, corporate development, business development, and communications. A fintech and payments operator with experience at both public and private equity-backed businesses, Brown is a graduate of Marist College (BA) and Pace University (MBA).
How is digital transformation impacting community banking? What can community banks do to maximize the opportunities that digitalization can provide? And what role should enabling technologies like AI play in helping community banks develop new products, new services, and new sources of revenue?
These are some of the questions posed to our fintech experts in our latest Streamly Subject Snapshot video on the digital transformation of community banking. Today’s conversation features insights and observations from:
Barb Maclean, SVP, Head of Technology Operations and Implementation at Coastal Community Bank (Linkedin)
“Your customers today are expecting to interact with their money at the time and place and mechanism of their choosing and they’re going to drive it off their phone, for the most part. So if you haven’t yet put in the kind of technology that enables them to do that in the way that they choose to do it, when they choose to do it, you’re definitely already behind the eight ball.”
John Waupsh, Chief Revenue Officer at Manifest Financial (LinkedIn)
“Certainly a lot of time the core is the scapegoat, whether it’s a real issue or not. ‘We as a bank have a challenge with X or building Y or doing some tactical thing because our data is being held by the core’ … The end of the story here is while it’s very challenging to switch core providers, every core, just like every vendor, wants to keep their customers around, wants to keep their clients around. So having progressive discussions with these providers, at an executive level, sharing strategy and moving forward together can usually be very productive.”
Brian Solis, Author of Mindshift: Ignite Change, Inspire Action, and Innovate for a Better Tomorrow (LinkedIn)
“Right now we have an ability to run our company as an intelligent company, an AI-first company, one that’s more intelligent, more integrated, and one that’s more focused on not just using AI to automate what we do, but looking to unlock the future. It’s prioritizing the use of AI in shaping new business models and operational models, products, services, with AI influencing every decision, from the problems the company chooses to solve, to explore new horizons, to the way it interacts with customers and employees.”
“Building the relationship is not about being personable, about saying, ‘Oh, we’ve got dog treats in our branch.’ That’s not going to grow your deposits. You need to bundle in additional services that grow your deposits without growing the cost of those. These include things like, say, account protection against scams and frauds. Things like an AI assistant that helps you answer tough questions about retirement and health care choices attached to it.”
Greg Palmer, Vice President at Finovate (LinkedIn)
“Community banks are in desperate need of new technologies, but they lack the resources that some of their larger competitors have, which means there’s a real opportunity for fintechs to come in and help them, give them new access to technologies that they need to stay competitive with their larger counterparts.”
For the first time, Finovate will offer a dedicated wealthtech/wealth management track at FinovateFall. Featuring keynote addresses, power panels, and more, our new wealthtech track will cover topics ranging from the rise of alternative assets to the role of technology and digitization in helping meet the needs of a new generation of investors.
“I’m really excited about the new Wealthtech track we’re offering at FinovateFall this year,” said Greg Palmer, host of Finovate. “So much innovation is taking place on the wealth management side of the fintech industry right now, and there are a lot of opportunities out there. Customer demographics are shifting, new assets are gaining popularity, and new technologies are raising the bar for every industry. It’s a crucial time to be paying attention to the space.”
Over the next few weeks, we’ll share a preview of the wealthtech content we have in store for you this year at FinovateFall. Today, we’re highlighting a pair of Power Panels that will take place on Day Three, September 11, of the conference.
Both of these Power Panels will be moderated by April Rudin, CEO and Founder of The Rudin Group. LinkedIn.
The Rudin Group is a global wealth management/wealthtech marketing consultancy serving banks, wealth management firms, fintechs, and wealthtechs.
The Future of Client Centricity in a Tech-Disrupted Wealth Landscape
Our Power Panel on the Future of Client Centricity will examine ways in which technology has altered the landscape of wealth management. The panel will discuss the impact of the Great Wealth Transfer from Baby Boomers to Millennials and what wealth managers should do to meet a new generation of investors’ growing preference for digital solutions and tools.
Andrea Finan, Head of J.P. Morgan Self-Directed Investing, J.P. Morgan Wealth Management
Finan is responsible for developing strategy, driving scale and profitability, and expanding capabilities to serve the firm’s Self-Directed and broader Wealth Management clients. She has 20 years of experience in financial services and is well-versed in creating high-performing digital products. LinkedIn.
Ali Geramian, Managing Director, Anthemis
Geramian is currently a Partner at Anthemis, where he steers the Anthemis ecosystem and investor relations platform to catalyze mutual value creation, collaboration, and transformative partnership opportunities across the firm’s global portfolio companies and strategic investor base. LinkedIn.
Michelle Julia Ng, Software Engineer, Apple
Ng is a software engineer with Apple. Educated at Stanford University (double majoring in Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence and History), Ng brings experience in the practical application of emerging technologies – including system intelligence, machine learning, and robustness analysis – having worked with Apple’s Vision Pro and Watch products. LinkedIn.
How Will Technology Transform How Alternative Assets are Managed?
This Power Panel will look at the rise of alternative assets through the lens of a shift toward diversification, a search for yield, a demand for uncorrelated returns, and a growing desire among a new generation of investors for investment opportunities that are aligned with their personal values. The Panel will also discuss how enabling technologies – from AI to the blockchain – will influence the way alternative assets are managed.
Bundeep Singh Rangar, CEO of Fineqia
A thought leader in blockchain technologies, Rangar is CEO of Fineqia International. Fineqia is a digital asset business that builds and targets investments in early and growth-stage technology companies. An investor in digital industries, Rangar has raised venture capital from entities such as Rakuten and secured private equity investment from U.S. financial institutions. LinkedIn.
David Teten, Venture Partner at Coolwater Capital
Teten is a Partner with Coolwater Capital. Known as the “Y Combinator for Emerging VCs,” Coolwater offers an accelerator for emerging VC fund managers and invests as a limited partner, into general partnerships and fund management companies. Coolwater also invests directly into startups. He is Chair of PEVCTech, a community of investors in private companies using AI, technology, and analytics to generate alpha. LinkedIn.
Everyone in our industry sits in a unique place. Because of this, there is immense value in taking the time to listen to others’ perspectives. At our FinovateSpring conference earlier this year, we spoke with Akita Somani, SVP of BNPL and Lending at U.S. Bank, and Bhavana Prathipati, Managing Director, Payments Product Manager at Silicon Valley Bank.
Both experts offered their insights on two key themes in the payments world. Somani discussed how U.S. Bank’s own buy now, pay later point of sale lending solution can help consumers pay for essentials such as home repairs. “It’s all about providing options, and therefore opportunities,” she said. Somani also highlighted regulatory issues in the BNPL arena.
On the opposite side of the traditional bank space, where U.S. Bank sits, Prathipati has a wide view of the fintech payments scene. In her interview, Prathipati discusses how real time payments has changed the lives of consumers by, for example, making real-time insurance claim payouts possible. She also touches on some of the challenges and risks involved in real-time payments.
The role of AI in financial services is rapidly evolving. Not since the heady days of the Internet boom has an emerging technology so powerfully captured the imagination of companies, investors, workers, and consumers around the world.
As financial services companies search for ways to take advantage of AI to improve efficiency, better understand data, and engage more proactively and personally with their customers, it is all the more worthwhile for us to listen to those entrepreneurs, analysts, and investors who have taken the time to understand both AI’s promise as well as its limitations. Here, in our latest series of Streamly interviews, we present three individuals whose insights into AI are worth hearing and sharing.
Generative AI: Extending the boundaries of what automation can do
In this interview with Sarah Hinkfuss, Partner of Bain Capital Ventures, we learn how generative AI is transforming the way financial institutions leverage unstructured data, streamline processes, improve underwriting, and expand their product offerings. The conversation also touches on the importance of data quality and change management in AI adoption for financial institutions, providing valuable lessons from early adopters.
How can you make AI adoption profitable?
Chris Brown, President of Intelygenz USAA, talks about two decades of optimizing banking and fintech through deep tech and AI solutions, and shares his top takeaways from his keynote address at FinovateSpring earlier this year. Brown discusses some of Intelygenz’s strategies to overcome common AI project pitfalls, and explains the company’s end-to-end approach to client engagement.
Navigating fraud prevention challenges with AI
Intellicheck CEO Bryan Lewis explores contemporary challenges in fraud prevention, the limitations of traditional methods, and the role of AI in enhancing security measures. Lewis discusses how AI can both help and hinder fraud prevention, as well as how you can protect yourself and your business from fraud.
The rapid evolution of technology turned regulatory compliance into a daunting frontier. Firms are not only required to keep up with changing technologies, but they also need to stay on top of increasingly complex requirements. Priya V. Misra, who sits at the forefront of this arena, is a pioneer in using LLMs to do the heavy lifting when it comes to compliance.
We recently spoke with Misra about his latest venture, the current regulatory environment, the landscape of LLMs, and advice for leveraging GenAI tools.
Tell us about EKAI and the problem you are trying to solve.
Priya V Misra: EKAI is the first AI compliance ‘co-worker’ for risk and finance professionals. The newer regulations are more complex and reporting on them is more frequent. Compliance platforms of the past are not able to cope with these new kind of reporting requirements. As a private SaaS platform, our proprietary AI software addresses the newer compliance requirements with ease. Our platform is designed to support the compliance plan development and sit at the holistic level for the Chief Compliance Officer and managers to digitally manage their compliance and prepare for regulation engagements and compliance submissions to the regulator. We are currently focusing on newer regulations like Operational Resilience, Consumer Duty, and ESG.
EKAI provides a natural language chat interface to make it easy to use. We believe that as the nature of data has evolved, compliance professionals in financial services also need enhanced systems and tools for this new normal to enable them to support the business and meet the requirements of regulators in a cost effective way. We tested the model with the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority as part of their sandbox and found regulator alignment for a tool such as our own to aid the industry in meeting their compliance requirements.
Banks and fintechs have always faced regulatory challenges. Why have concerns around regulation been so heightened in the past few months?
Misra: The concerns around regulation have been heightened in the past few months due to a fundamental shift in different kinds of regulations. The newer regulations are moving from ‘what’ to ‘how’. This basically means that organizations need to show the evidence of compliance, the ‘how’ they are meeting the compliance and not just ‘what’ their compliance approach is. The regulation horizon we see is placing consumer protection at the heart. This could be multi-jurisdictional with the advent of the Consumer Duty regulation in the U.K., to follow similar types of regulations in Europe. For the industry, we see the impacts on costs from being able to handle the multiple and, at times, competing priorities between regulations and maintaining business-as-usual in an environment still competitive for talent. Tools like EKAI offer compliance professionals in financial services better oversight on how they are performing from a delivery perspective against the compliance requirements across multiple programs.
How have you seen the conversation around GenAI and LLMs evolve in the financial services industry in the last year-and-a-half?
Misra: The conversation around GenAI and LLMs in the financial services industry has evolved in the right direction. The initial trepidation has now been met with wider adoption, with at least of ChatGPT opening the doorway for productivity enhancements from more business intelligence software like EKAI sitting at the intersection of compliance. EKAI has pioneered the use of the Small Language Model (SLM) for AI in corporate usage. SLMs de-risk AI implementation and provide a way to progressively deploy features. SLMs are eco-friendly as they require lower GPU usage and are quicker to train.
Apart from EKAI’s application of GenAI, what is the most powerful application of GenAI for financial services you have seen?
Misra: One of the most widely implemented GenAI applications within financial services that I have seen is in customer support. The power of GenAI lies in its ability to use company-specific information for answering customer queries and intelligently switch to a human counterpart for sensitive queries.
How do LLMs compare to traditional methods of regulatory compliance and risk assessment in terms of efficiency and accuracy?
Misra: The traditional methods of regulatory compliance work for traditional regulations. The data for these regulations was structured and mainly consisted of numbers. LLMs and GenAI are critical in compliance moving forward. They can handle unstructured data of documents, messages, and transcripts. This gives the organizations a strong foundation to build and use compliance platforms.
What advice would you offer firms who are avoiding GenAI tools because of regulatory and compliance concerns?
Misra: Every industry will be impacted by GenAI and/or LLMs eventually. I would advise them to embrace it selectively because it is coming anyway. The GenAI Act coming into force in Europe in the upcoming months will transform the landscape from a sort of ‘wild west’ into one with the types of benchmarks and controls that will ensure its wider and confident adoption across industries in a way that an industrial revolution is supposed to, transforming skillsets and producing efficiency gains future generations should benefit from.
