AI in Financial Services: Making it happen at scale

By Nerijus Zemgulys, Kirsten Rulf, Alyssa Lew from Boston Consulting Group & Rafat Kapadia from Elevandi

3 June 2024 - The landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) has seen an astonishing transformation over the last decade. Specifically in the context of data and banks, financial institutions have been urged to embrace AI to explore the myriad of opportunities it offers.  

From 15-17 November 2023, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Elevandi and Constellar, in partnership with The Association of Banks hosted the Singapore Fintech Festival 2023 in Singapore.  

The roundtable discussion and sessions hosted over the week by the Festival brought together global stakeholders to engage in needed discussions surrounding AI. Insights from regulators and financial institutions from all over the world were shared, and this report summarizes and complements discussions held, providing insights for each.

We have found that while financial institutions engage frequently in experimentation in AI, many pilots do not progress past initial pilot stages, raising questions on the ability of institutions to bring use-cases to scale. Similarly, from the regulator’s perspective, while generally supportive of industry experimenting with AI, regulators still take risk-averse stances to regulation, given the many “unknown unknown” risks that AI poses.

This report explores the practical concerns surrounding AI, the practical takeaways for institutions to consider how they may bring pilots to scale and for regulators to 
consider how they may foster a regulatory environment that would encourage such pilots to be brought to scale, both to achieve AI’s desired impact on the financial services industry. 

This report is a joint initiative of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Elevandi. The authors would like to thank the members of BCG and Elevandi for their contributions to the development and production of the report. In addition, the authors are extremely grateful to festival participants whose contributions to the support were invaluable.