(Bloomberg) — Citigroup Inc . said artificial intelligence is likely to displace more jobs in the banking industry than any other sector, as the technology is poised to improve consumer finances and make workers more productive.
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About 54% of banking jobs have a high potential to be automated, the bank said Wednesday in a new report on AI. An additional 12% of roles across the industry could be augmented by technology, Citigroup found.
The world’s biggest banks have slowly started experimenting more with AI over the past year, driven by the promise that it will help them increase staff productivity and cut costs. In its latest report, Citigroup found that technology could add $170 billion to the banking industry’s coffers by 2028.
Citigroup has said it will equip its 40,000 coders with the ability to experiment with different AI technologies, and the company has said it has used generative AI, which can produce sentences, essays or poems based on simple questions or commands. a user, to brush them quickly. hundreds of pages of regulatory proposals.
“Our focus now is to take it from the lab to the factory floor,” Citigroup Chief Executive Jane Fraser said Thursday at the company’s digital money symposium, adding that the banking giant is also exploring using AI to provide recommendations personalized investment for wealthy clients. and to improve its cyber security offerings.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is recruiting talent, and CEO Jamie Dimon has said he believes the technology will allow employers to cut the work week to just 3.5 days. Deutsche Bank AG is using artificial intelligence to scan the portfolios of wealthy clients. And ING Groep NV is looking into potential abusers.
Generative AI “has the potential to revolutionize the banking industry and improve profitability,” David Griffiths, Citigroup’s chief technology officer, said in a statement accompanying the new report. “At Citi, we are focused on implementing AI in a safe and responsible way to amplify the power of Citi and our people.”
Even if AI replaces some roles across the industry, Citigroup said, the technology may not lead to a decline in the number of employees. Financial firms will likely need to hire a pool of AI managers and AI-focused compliance officers to help them ensure their use of the technology complies with regulations.
Plus, new technologies haven’t always led to job cuts. In an example provided by Citigroup, the number of human indicators increased between the 1970s and the mid-2000s even after the introduction of automated machines.
Customer service
One of the main use cases for generative AI among fintech startups and banking giants has been customer service and support. Take Revolut Ltd.: the fintech is already using AI to capture more than 30% of all customer conversations.
“This is an area where the sky’s the limit,” said Francesca Carlesi, who runs Revolut’s UK-wide business. “I have no doubt that in a few years we can have 80% of the interaction with customers. They are managed very efficiently through genAI.”
Rivals such as Amsterdam-based Bunq or Stockholm’s Klarna have also embraced the technology in recent years. Klarna credited the technology with helping the company reduce operating expenses by 11% in the first quarter, while Bunq recently launched a chatbot that allows users to query their spending information with questions such as “How long will it take me to check out in retirement?” and “How much money did I spend on my trip to New York?”
Citigroup warned in its latest report that AI-powered chatbots have some limitations. In some cases, chatbots struggle to understand jargon and often struggle to understand vague questions, the bank found.
“Since AI models are known to hallucinate and create information that doesn’t exist, organizations run the risk of AI chatbots becoming fully autonomous and negatively impacting the business financially or its reputation,” the report said.
(Updates with comments from CEO Jane Fraser in paragraph five, additional information from the event beginning in paragraph 10.)
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