AI History Was Made This Past Week

By Aaron Lazor

CEO and co-founder of Finscend

Excuse the clichés, but in this case they’re truly appropriate. When it rains it pours. And this past week was a week to remember.

First, huge news from Mastercard. They’ve just inaugurated the first of six planned facilities around the globe that will speed up innovations dealing with artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity and Internet of Things (IoT). Mastercard is investing $510 million in this single one alone, located in Vancouver, Canada, which will employ 380 people. It is a project undertaken jointly with the Canadian government through its Strategic Innovation Fund.

Meanwhile, in Britain, Barclays Bank has announced that it is busy improving its data in order to enable it use AI to detect and reduce fraud. And more than that. It is also putting AI to work to improve customer service. And Barclays isn’t unique.

As a matter of fact, it turns out that the Bank of England has found that machine learning (ML) tools are now in use at two-thirds of British financial institutions. So much so that, together with the UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), it has established its AI Public Private Forum (AIPPF) to guide banks as they incorporate AI and ML into their platforms.

But there’s still more (and a few more clichés as well). In a sign of the times and with an eye to the future, Spain’s CaixaBank has begun AI training for its employees.

Why is AI so attractive to banks? As one Barclays executive states:

“At Barclays we are creating and implementing efficiencies by eliminating repetitive everyday tasks that require little human skill but would otherwise take up large amounts of employees’ time.”

That’s exactly the benefit of Finscend’s Bank Dispute Platform.