AI in Financial Services: embracing the new reality

For more than a decade, the use of innovative technologies has been dramatically reshaping the financial services sector that we know. Use of online banking apps, chat-bots and innovative payment solutions has become a new normal for consumers around the globe and some more advanced technological breakthroughs like crypto-assets are becoming ever less strange area for a great number of people as well. In the background, financial institutions have been leveraging the use of new technologies for the more efficient provision of financial services, from cloud computing, algorithmic and high frequency trading systems all the way to the distributed ledger technology (DLT).

Aiming to achieve better cost and time efficiency as well as better customer experience and investment outcome, financial institutions are competing with each other in a continuous race all looking to get the answer to the same question: what is going to be “the next big thing”?

End of last year, the wider public was for the first time able to see the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (AI) based systems following the release of the chat-bot called „ChatGPT”. This sent the shockwaves throughout the world as well as the clear signal to big enterprises, including the financial institutions, that investment in AI shall be put (back) on the top of their agenda in the years to come.

It is no secret anymore that businesses and governments around the world are increasingly focusing on AI since according to some estimations, it is expected that AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030 by increasing productivity across various sectors.

In our latest publication, our experts Dr. Verena Ritter Döring (Partner, Banking & Finance Regulatory) and Miroslav Đurić (Associate, Banking & Finance Regulatory) analyse legal and regulatory aspects of the use of AI based systems in the financial services sector, by focusing on the existing challenges and upcoming regulatory developments in this space.