GenAI in financial services: delivering the workforce promise

Workforce transformation: embracing GenAI for innovation

Workforce transformation and generative AI (GenAI) have become a dynamic duo of hot topics in the press. Probably no area of technology is more hotly debated and discussed than the impact AI will have on people at work. Pundits predict the displacement of jobs, from the creative arts to back-office personnel, and suppliers promise efficiencies and cost savings as knowledge workers can focus more on the strategic and leave the tactical to intelligent agents and assistants. To bring the conversation a level up, EY hosted a webcast titled GenAI in financial services: delivering the workforce promise, with the goal to explore some of the more strategic aspects of the conversation for business leaders as they grapple with the impact of GenAI on the workforce. The discussion included a wide range of topics, from getting to the real ROI from GenAI to enabling a digital workforce and a culture of curiosity. The following are highlights from the conversation.

A common understanding of ROI

Transformational projects involving new technology can be daunting and require up-front investment in dollars and resources. For digital workforce transformation, it is critical to understand how to define and measure ROI. The return for GenAI could fall into a range of categories, such as increased employee satisfaction and wellbeing, cost or time savings, enhanced collaboration and innovation, accelerated growth and/or productivity boosts, and improved customer services. We asked attendees during the session how they were measuring ROI for GenAI projects. While 73% said they were measuring return across an expected mix of productivity, cost savings and efficiency gains, fewer are focused on measuring the soft returns that can yield a positive impact for the workforce.

Unlike use cases centered directly around automation, defining concrete ROI relative to workforce optimization can be more elusive — there isn’t always one clear definition or measurement. It’s not that hard measurements don’t exist, but quantification of important benefits, such as employee satisfaction and wellbeing or enhanced collaboration, can be hard to achieve.

Measuring a broader impact

Financial services firms have been investing in AI for decades. Some have developed a high level of maturity in traditional back-office automation and in areas like credit and risk management, but GenAI represents new ground. Beyond measuring ROI for discreet use cases, @Edwina Fitzmaurice, EY Global Chief Customer Success Officer, suggested looking at the impact of GenAI on the workforce under a broader framework that encompasses the employee experience. After leading the implementation of an AI tool called EYQ that is available to most EY employees, her team sought to evaluate the impact in a framework they called HPQ, for human, productivity and quality:

Human — Are people embracing the technology? Do they like it? It’s important to be able to measure active users and poll them on how they are using new tools and what they’d like to see changed or improved. When people like using a tool, they are more likely to build it into their daily workflow.

Productivity — This is a role-dependent dimension of the framework and can help to determine what roles benefit most from specific tools. It’s important to drill down with users and have conversations on how they are using tools to improve productivity, including the features for enhancement, other roles that can benefit and even where tools are not making an impact to manage the investment.

Quality — Monitoring users’ feelings about tool quality (and testing these views against actual output) is critical not only to judging the success of the tool but to identifying new ways to uplift outcomes. With GenAI, better prompts tend to get better answers, so measuring quality includes looking at how good the tool is, the training provided to users and their ability to use the tool effectively.

Creating a digitally enabled workforce

GenAI is a valuable tool to a digitally enabled workforce. The talent and HR function plays a critical leadership role in creating this kind of workforce in three broad areas:

Culture of curiosity — More and more, we hear about the need to fail fast to truly innovate. Respondents to our online survey during the webinar supported this general sentiment. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said their culture of innovation encouraged employees to experiment and/or fail. Experimentation, supported by guardrails and risk mitigation techniques, is key to getting employees comfortable with GenAI and is an important practice in uncovering the hidden use cases that may make the biggest impact to productivity. To do this, financial services companies will need to create an environment where fast failure is embraced, not feared. In some firms, and particularly in those that pride themselves on an ethos of impeccable service, this requires a new mindset. It is also important to dispel any notion of fear in the workforce around GenAI. Many experts see AI augmenting human capabilities, not replacing them entirely — this is an important message in helping employees adopt new technologies on the job, instead of fearing them.

Upskilling — Employees are asking for more training. They want to learn how to use GenAI tools as much as leaders want them to use them. After all, there is much to be gained. Organizations that don’t actively provide guidance and training to their employees risk improper use of GenAI tools, which could lead to negative impacts.

Change management — Transformation has become a constant state within financial services, and GenAI has accelerated the transformation agenda to an ever-faster pace. Transformations can be emotional and personal for employees — particularly where jobs are changed, threatened or even upended. Putting enough focus on the change management experience, including by placing humans at the center, is key to engaging the workforce, building confidence and driving long-term adoption — all key to achieving a compelling ROI. Human-centric innovation means making the human element of a project the focal point, not simply a workstream.

EY teams help enable the world’s leading financial services firms to ask the big questions, align GenAI programs with company values and execute strategies to capture opportunity. Our multidisciplinary teams can look across the business, technology, risk and privacy disciplines to help build comprehensive strategies and operating models. Whether you are looking to improve customer engagement or enhance knowledge management for the workforce, we can help you transform your business through pragmatic and holistic approaches from strategy through to execution, balancing risk and reward. Visit our GenAI service page to learn more.

Thanks to my article co-author Jamaal Justice.

The views reflected in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization.

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