Global Access CSG

?? MUST READ?? AI in Banking: A Middle and Back Office Revolution For Now Any report about AI in banking that boldly proclaims that “the reality is nowhere close to the hype” is a winner!?The candor of the authors should be celebrated! After surveying banks, the report concludes that AI benefits banks, but most benefits are behind the scenes, not in the sexy client-focused areas advertised by consultants. So far, AI’s biggest impact in banking is in middle- and back-office functions where manual processes, paperwork, and data-intensive tasks are perfect for AI. The front office is still a problem, and the promise of radical AI customer-centricity is still a pipe dream because most banks don’t have the data or the ability to access it.? AI is impactful now, it's just that customer-facing AIs in banking will take longer than advertised to develop.? ??TAKEAWAYS AI use cases that work NOW ?? TECH AND CODING: Leveraging GenAI to enhance engineering capacity. By using AI, financial services firms can automate code generation and documentation, create synthetic data, optimize algorithms and make software development more efficient. ?? HR TRAINING AND ONBOARDING:?New employees can be brought up to speed with AI-powered onboarding tools that can provide quick access to relevant information, training modules and skill development resources. ?? RISK AND COMPLIANCE: AI is proving useful in the field of fraud detection. ML models, for example, can analyze customer activity and transaction patterns, flagging any suspicious activity. ?? OPERATIONS AND PROCESS DOCUMENTATION: AI solutions provide easy and quick access to specific tasks, eliminating the need to review thousands of documents manually. ?? COMMERCIAL AND MARKETING: AI can turbocharge marketing and commercial campaigns for organizations by personalizing content, improving clickthrough rates and enhancing customer engagement. ??STRAIGHT TALK?? Yes, AI will transform banking, but given AI's numerous risks, it will migrate from the back office to the front and not the other way around. It makes perfect sense that heavily regulated banks will be slow to roll out AI to clients and this report shows how banks are acting cautiously. I applaud banks' caution because it is in all of our best interests that they get it right.? This report suggests that front office customer engagement AI’s are at least another two years away which is a fair number. GenAI will undoubtedly transform banking, just give it time and don’t buy into the hype.? Most bankers haven’t! Thoughts? ??Friends, don't let friends go without comments! ??Reposters you are the best! Thanks so much for sharing! ---------------------- ?? My name is Rich, I’m not an AI and am here to chat. And you? ?? #Fintech, #AI and #Tech at the speed of #Asia and #China. ??Onalytica No.4 Global Fintech Influencer with two best-sellers. Like this post? Want to see more? ?? Follow me. ?? Click on “view my blog” ?? for more!

A German real estate trust just marked its NAV down by 17% - or Euro800m Uni Immo Wohnen ZBI is a German open ended real estate fund, with assets of approxmately 4 billion. According to the article below from Suddeutsche Zeitung (thanks Matthias Knab for the translation!) the fund was launched in the summer of 2017 by the Erlangen-based ZBI Group, which in turn is backed by Union Investment, the in-house fund company of the Volks- and Raiffeisenbanken, one of the largest providers in Germany. Last week, the fund suddenly revised its NAV, down 17% from 50.74 euros to 42.46 euros. The Bloomberg graph below is certainly one you don't see every day. I am far from a real estate expert, and it does appear that this fund is concentrated in residential apartments (Germany is a country with a very high rate of rental homes as compared to North America). Some writers suggest that the success in marketing the fund in its early days caused a rush to deploy cash in the late 2010s pre pandemic, which may have led to weak underwriting. So, to be a clear, this is not AAA office properties or the twin golden geese of Amazon warehouses and AI data centers. The article does contain some comments about residential valuations and, in turn, the fund's own valuation procedures: "However, residential property prices in particular have recently collapsed after years of breathless boom. For example, apartment buildings have become cheaper by an average of more than ten percent in less than two years, as data from the Association of Pfandbrief Banks shows." But then, according to the article: "A Union Investment spokesman denies that the reaction to all of this [declining residential markets] was too late. The previous valuations were "not wrong," and the properties were assessed quarterly by two independent experts in accordance with the specifications. The risk class [low risk suitable for conservative customers with a long investment horizon] was also correctly determined." The Bloomberg graph below suggests that the two independent external valuation appraisal agents had started to nudge the fund's value down in mid / late 2023, but had evidently failed to capture the true collapse in value of the specific assets in this fund. There is no indication as to who the appraisal agents were. They could be anything from sole practitioner surveyors through to one of the globally recognised real estate firms. From an ODD perspective, though, I think it is fair to say that real estate valuations are at the more doubtful end of the "independent appraisal" quality spectrum. The firms providing the values are, of course, economically dependent on real estate themselves as brokers, property managers, surveyors etc. They are unlikely to talk down their own sector - until extend and pretend finally becomes too hard to hide. #odd #realestate #valuation https://lnkd.in/e2gkVcEe

First AAA tranche with losses in a CMBS since the Financial Crisis - 1460 Broadway, NYC https://lnkd.in/e_vWTR4j

Mohamed El-Erian on the Fed’s forward policy guidance… https://lnkd.in/eaypEAwe

Chart courtesy of The Kobeissi Letter comparing housing inflation using pre-1983 methodology superimposed on the current official CPI methodology. The difference has now become dramatic.

Is it getting better or worse ??? It depends on where you sit and what your stake is. Better for Landlords... NO/ Better for Tenants (our clients) YES

While not in the U.S. this time, these proceedings, like the digital property rights case concerning crypto assets in Singapore, the EU’s AI Act, NYT v OpenAI, X Corp v California AB 587, and others like them will continue to shape and define the contours and boundaries of the digital sphere in the Age of AI toward a more global consensus with regional characteristics. Meaning, it is unlikely that the US and EU, for example, will have identical or even necessarily similar regulatory approaches. Still these cases will cross-inform approaches across jurisdictions. These are the defining moments. We continue from a legal, consulting, and investment perspective across our platforms Global Access Capital, Global Access CSG, and related portfolio businesses (www.globalaccesscsg.com) and Macaluso LLP (www.macalusollp.com) to play a role in assisting our companies and clients to find their way to successful execution.

In this webinar recording, Nirad Jain and Kara Murphy, co-leaders of our Global Healthcare Private Equity group, discuss key insights from our 2024 Global Healthcare Private Equity Report, and dive into the forces creating major opportunities for investors and their portfolio companies, from generative AI to the burgeoning Indian market to innovation in life sciences.

As I have stated elsewhere the enormous mismatches and dislocations in the massive US residential and commercial real estate markets do not look likely to abate in the near term. The result of Fed rate hikes that came too fast, went too high, and lasted too long as many observers have noted. The real questions now are what is the new normal the market can expect this year and how long will it take to get there? Unfortunately, 2024 is shaping up as a year with significant geo-political uncertainties ranging from ongoing conflicts to elections in a significant number of countries and also uncertainties surrounding the level of inflation, perceived climate risk, and potential impact of AI/ML, etc, which uncertainties collectively don’t play well with the notion of rate stability. https://lnkd.in/ex32bEkj

More housing data - Existing Home Sales