Financial services organisations see AI as the key to increasing competitiveness and improving customer experience, but face barriers around data management and skills, according to new research from agentic automation company SS&C Blue Prism.
Through a survey of 377 business leaders in the financial services sector, SS&C Blue Prism found that 94 per cent of organisations believe that innovative AI is core to their entire business operations. The adoption of AI continues to increase in the financial services sector, with 87 per cent actively deploying new AI technologies.
Agentic AI, the emerging technology where AI can make decisions and conduct activities autonomously, remains a high priority for the financial services sector. Seventy-six per cent of organisations plan to implement agentic AI within 12 months – but this isn’t without its challenges.
Despite rapid adoption of AI throughout financial services, 38 per cent said they do not have accurate and consistent data in their organisation, while 37 per cent do not have robust and efficient ways of moving data within their organisation. Breaking down data silos within an organisation and creating consistent and accurate data is a major barrier to successfully deploy next generation AI. Additionally, 31 per cent of organisations admitted they don’t have strong governance in place to make sure data is secure, private, and managed with the appropriate consents.
Data is not the only barrier to next generation AI success for financial organisations, finding the right skills and adopting to a more dynamic approach to innovation represent significant challenges. Thirty-six per cent of financial services organisations say they lack the appropriate skills or technical expertise, 35 per cent are concerned about extensive changes around employee training and management, and 33 per cent are facing hurdles with technical integrations.
Taking the correct approach
Rob Paisley, senior director at SS&C Blue Prism, commented: “AI has such high potential for financial services, and the race is clearly on. But it’s absolutely vital that organisations have the right foundations in place, rather than rushing in to deploy AI technologies.
“Organisations will need a development team and tech stack they can trust to keep up with the pace of innovation in AI. It’s a big mindset shift for financial organisations, going from cycles of upgrading their software once a year, to potentially twice daily. This team is also vital to ensuring there are processes and systems for ensuring data is consistent, reliable and can be moved securely throughout the organization to eliminate data silos.
“Technology can be part of the solution to this challenge, especially when it comes to testing new tech rollouts. An enterprise AI approach, combining technologies including robotic process automation, machine learning, natural language processing and Generative AI, with practices such as task mining and process orchestration, to help organisations become truly AI-ready.”
With the potential to speed up processing times, create new experiences and 24/7 support capabilities, customer experience is the area most (53 per cent) business leaders believe AI will have the biggest impact. Compliance also ranked highly, with 49 per cent saying the greatest potential for AI is to streamline know your customer and anti-money laundering checks, sanctions screening and regulatory reporting. Increasing business efficiency (46 per cent) and productivity (45 per cent) were listed as the other top uses for AI.
