As published in BankingExchange.com

Today, banks of all sizes have access to a considerable amount of customer data that’s processed and stored on a daily basis, from credit history to buying activity. While industry innovators have always used this data to optimize services and enhance customer experiences, the emerging technology landscape presents new opportunities to take these data resources to new heights, particularly in the realm of generative AI (GenAI). 

Today, more than 50% of tech leaders within the financial services industry are interested in exploring AI applications, signaling a trend of increased adoption of this technology. Although many use cases may focus on customer experience applications, operational improvement is also an area of high value. In this environment, bank risk and compliance professionals have a unique opportunity to incorporate meaningful, measured GenAI capabilities into their workflows to help them manage risk, maintain compliance, and safely grow their business. 

Increasing GenAI use cases

Every risk or compliance professional can relate to poring over hundreds of pages of regulatory documents to not only identify new laws and regulatory obligations to which they are subject, but to help provide insights on how those developments impact their front-line business partners and broader business operations. 

As large language models (LLMs) continue to advance, GenAI is emerging as a key tool in helping bank compliance professionals stay more current on the regulatory landscape, and ultimately optimize their risk and compliance programs. This capability stems from GenAI’s power to generate profound insights from new information and even recommend next steps based on historical actions. With nearly 70% of financial leaders denoting technology investment as a crucial step towards managing new regulatory developments, GenAI provides an immediate use case in helping professionals not only identify business obligations from new or existing regulations, but to communicate the impact of changes to frontline business leaders. 

Across industries, staffing shortages force companies to “do more with less,” leveraging their limited resources for maximum efficiency. Financial institutions are certainly not excluded from this struggle, and resource constraints may be even more pressing as some of the largest banks strive to process millions of transactions each day. GenAI’s power to process information and aid decision-making presents an immediate opportunity to automate many of the manual tasks comprising employee workloads. From helping evaluate the impact of a new regulation on risk ratings to identifying vulnerabilities and suggesting controls to safeguard banking operations, GenAI, if successfully implemented, can augment human decision-making, allowing employees to deliver higher-value work.  

Lastly, GenAI may complement human insights when challenges abound. While the human brain is excellent at reacting to immediate information and making decisions, GenAI can take a bird’s-eye view of an entire information landscape to surface insights hidden to the naked eye. This capability is useful for pairing customer caches with historical trend data to inform risk assessments or flag anomalous transactions indicative of potential fraud. 

Say hello to the AI steward

GenAI’s potential to help compliance professions see around blind spots and better anticipate and avoid risk is promising.  However, after the initial enthusiasm subsides, a daunting implementation journey remains, with no clear path to integration. At this stage, many chief compliance officers may become anxious about navigating GenAI integration complexities, but therein lies a silver lining: one needn’t embark on this journey alone. 

This exploratory phase represents the best time for chief compliance and risk officers to assemble a team of “AI stewards.” These professionals, drawn from all areas of the business, will be instrumental in crafting a GenAI implementation strategy and providing insight into which business processes would benefit from GenAI’s automative and predictive capabilities. This early stage is also an optimal time to involve legal, client relations, and even HR to better understand the ethical and legal considerations of both internal and external GenAI integration, especially as privacy and data stewardship come to the forefront. 

While tech and IT leaders may have the most hands-on role in a bank’s GenAI rollout, incorporating team members from across business functions is equally important— it may come as a surprise as to where your “AI allies” are hiding!

Assessing risks and devising best practices 

No technological integration is worth exposing a bank’s sensitive information to potential hackers or leaving data open to compromise, and GenAI integration is no exception. However, by employing the latest guidance, risk and compliance professionals can support a secure rollout. 

While federal guidance like last year’s landmark Executive Order on AI safety and security is a valuable starting point for general risk evaluation, the breakneck speed of AI innovation requires stakeholders to get ahead of federal regulation to remain competitive. 

State-level legislation coming out of Colorado and California may provide more comprehensive guidance, especially as these states deploy GenAI tools for public services. Across the pond, European regulations such as the AI Act are years ahead of early US frameworks and may serve as a helpful guide. 

It must be noted that big data resources—which make large banks especially excellent GenAI integration candidates—remain the central reason why careful guidance is needed: AI models can exert a significant impact on the millions of customers served by these institutions every day. For example, GenAI models trained on biased data sets are particularly problematic for financial institutions, as functions like credit scoring or underwriting can easily be influenced by underlying prejudices embedded in the model.

Moreover, as AI-generated content becomes even more conversational and widespread, the importance of early disclosure of how GenAI may influence their products and services is paramount. Risk and compliance professionals should consult their company’s legal team to ensure these disclosures are made at the earliest possible stage. 

Conclusion 

In this age of digital disruption, banks must move fast to keep up with evolving industry demands. Generative AI is quickly emerging as a strategic tool to carve out a competitive niche. With unique insight into a bank’s most resource-heavy functions, risk and compliance professionals have a valuable role in identifying the best areas for GenAI automation. 

Kris Stewart, JD, CRCM, is a senior director in the compliance product management team at Wolters Kluwer. Reach her at LinkedIn.