There is no doubt artificial intelligence is enabling faster and smarter decision-making with the financial services space not being an exception.
Many internal QA and engineering teams benefit from the relatively young technology, allowing banks and other finance firms to work faster and automate many testing tasks.
As many banks are rushing to embrace AI, Dutch banking giant ING Group is certainly one of them.
In fact, ING is “harnessing AI’s power”, according to Bahadir Yilmaz, the bank’s chief analytics officer (CAO).
“Data combined with superior analytics leads to insight and foresight, which allows a superior experience that is easy, personal, instant and relevant,” he argued.
“We would like to position analytics and AI as the most critical enablers in transforming our operations,” Yilmaz added.
He claims ING has the people, the knowledge and the management support to achieve this.
Amsterdam-headquartered ING booked revenue of close to €19 billion last year, with assets totalling just over €967, while it employs close to 61,000 people in over fifty countries.
“We are exploring opportunities in software engineering to write code or fix bugs.”
– Bahadir Yilmaz
“Long term, we must stay close to the latest developments in the market, so we must stay relevant. Therefore, having an active and safe approach toward technologies like generative AI is key,” Yilmaz said in a recent GFM analysis.
After all, Yilmaz certainly does recognise AI has many potential benefits, as he singled out software testing and engineering.
“To test this, we’re taking a tightly controlled and focused approach where we can apply genAI and learn from controlled experiments,” he explained.
Yilmaz stressed that that “we are taking a prudent and responsible approach to doing this safely and securely and exploring opportunities in software engineering to write code or fix bugs.”
“We must leverage the potential of AI in a responsible manner, aiming to keep the bank safe by focusing on and prioritizing domains like KYC, detection of financial crime, fraud and sustainability.”
‘No rush’
Most of Yilmaz’s peers agree with him and have set out a similar strategy for the integration of AI into their software capabilities, with some taking a slightly more cautious approach.
For example, Michael Ruttledge, chief information officer and head of enterprise technology at Citizens Bank recently said his organisation “is not rushing into AI.”
Ruttledge stated that “we have the human in the loop, so there’s someone validating the [software] codes before they are launched in production.”
“There’s someone validating and checking the answers before we give it to our customers.”
With around $220 billion in assets under management and close to 18,000 employees, the bank is a major finance player in the northeast of the US.
Yilmaz largely shared this sentiment, as he does not want “the bank nor our customers to be exposed to any risks related to innovation or experimentation.”
He called for initiatives to be caried out in “a responsible, structured and supervised way,” adding that “this is especially true for genAI, a new technology in uncharted territory.”
UPCOMING EVENTS
QA FINANCIAL FORUM LONDON: RECAP
Last month, on September 11, QA Financial held the London conference of the QA Financial Forum, a global series of conference and networking meetings for software risk managers.
The agenda was designed to meet the needs of software testers working for banks and other financial firms working in regulated, complex markets.
Please check our special post-conference flipbook by clicking here.
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