94% of organisations consider next generation AI core to their entire business operations

Financial services organisations see AI as the key to increase competitiveness and improve customer experience, but face barriers around data management and skills, research released today by SS&C Blue Prism has revealed.

Surveying 377 business leaders in the financial services sector, the research found that 94% of organisations believe that innovative AI is core to their entire business operations. The adoption of AI has been rapid in the financial services sector, with 87% actively deploying new AI technologies.

Agentic AI, the emerging technology where AI can make decisions and conduct activities autonomously, is a high priority for the financial services sector. Three quarters (76%) of organizations surveyed plan to implement agentic AI within 12 months, but challenges remain.

Despite rapid adoption of AI throughout financial services, 38% said they do not have accurate and consistent data in their organisation and 37% do not have robust and efficient ways of moving data within their organisation. Breaking down data silos within an organization and creating consistent and accurate data is a major barrier to successfully deploy next generation AI. Additionally, 31% 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 organizations, finding the right skills and adopting to a more dynamic approach to innovation represent significant challenges. More than a third (36%) of financial services organisations say they lack the appropriate skills or technical expertise, 35% are concerned about extensive changes around employee training and management, and 33% are facing hurdles with technical integrations.

Rob Paisley, Senior Director at SS&C Blue Prism, comments:

“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%) business leaders believe AI will have the biggest impact. Compliance also ranked highly, with 49% 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%) and productivity (45%) were listed as the other the top uses for AI.