AI’s Got Talent!

In a recent report, Evident has looked at the critical issue of talent in AI positions within the 50 leading banks that it tracks. 

Banks leading the way in AI 

These 50 banks are leading the way in AI deployment in the banking sector, and include the likes of HSBC, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas, Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, CommBank, and BNY. These banks have recruited AI talent, they are implementing AI, and they are disclosing more about what they are doing with AI than any other financial institutions currently seem to be.

Four pillars

Talent is one of the “four pillars” tracked by Evident. The other pillars are innovation, leadership, and transparency, with talent proportionately ranking as the weightiest of the four. Evident has looked closely at the details of the demographic of the people working in AI roles within these 50 banks, including how many they are, their academic backgrounds, and how they are hired, trained and retained. 

The pace is picking up

The report signals that the sector is approaching a “critical milestone in sector-specific tech spending”, acknowledging that while AI has been around for a while, it is only for the last three years or so that we have seen real impetus in financial services to ideate, experiment, develop proof-of-concepts, implement and deploy AI. 

The financial services sector is still very much at the start of its AI journey, with most AI applications classified as internal and low-risk, and with publicly disclosed information, in reality, being just a fraction of what is actually being worked on behind the scenes. However, all the indications are that there is a rapid acceleration of efforts in AI across the sector.

Bottom-up and top-down

The key findings of the report evidence a bottom-up and top-down approach by these banks to investment in technology, education in technology, and in a diverse raft of AI-related skill-sets including:

• scientists and developers who design and create AI solutions;
• data engineers and data architects who bridge the gap between the development of AI and AI implementation;
• software developers and engineers who take AI tools and integrate them into the businesses;
• people skilled in risk, governance and audit who have the experience to address the risks and potential adverse consequences; 
• product managers who bridge the gaps between the business and its ultimate consumers, extrapolating user insights into actionable tasks and driving return on investment; and
• board members with suitable technology expertise. 

More talent = better results

The report makes some clear conclusions:  

• the more AI talent that you deploy, the better your AI outcomes will be;
• the AI talent stack in banks is growing with 1 in 50 bank employees now in an AI or data related role; and
• lots of AI training is happening inside the banks, often in ways directly aligned to the deployment of AI which has very likely been trialled in sandboxed environments by bank “super-users”.

Skills shortage

It takes time to create talent, to attract it, retain it and to constantly upskill it. In other on-point news stories this week, it has been reported that suitably skilled talent is in deficit and that this is hampering the efforts of banks to move forward. In particular, the banks, notoriously weighed down by tonnes of disorganised and inaccessible legacy data, need skilled data scientists who have the skills that are needed to transform these giant pools of data into something workable. It seems that data scientists with solid backgrounds in financial services and with a clear understanding of financial risk do not grow on trees and this current shortage of talent is creating a challenge for the banks who need to get their data sets sorted as the initial piece of their AI jigsaw. Inevitably, this talent pool will evolve and grow with data engineers and data scientists aligning themselves with the opportunities available in these fields within the financial services sector, but this will not happen overnight. 

Regulatory focus

If you would like to discuss how current or future regulations impact what you do with AI, please contact me, Tom Whittaker, or Martin Cook. You can meet our financial services experts here and our technology experts here.

You can read more thought-leadership like this by subscribing to our monthly financial services regulation update by clicking here and clicking here for our AI blog and here for our AI newsletter. 

MORE TALENT = BETTER OUTCOMES The leading banks on AI talent have disclosed a greater volume and a more diverse set of use cases than banks with less mature talent stacks. They are also more likely to disclose estimates of ROI. Investment in AI talent translates directly into AI outcomes

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