There’s still plenty of financial artificial intelligence news to report, but we’re going to start this week’s AI & Finance with a confession of our own:
We have never used generative artificial intelligence to produce an AI & Finance column. Personally, I have never used GenAI to create a piece of journalism in any form, from research and reporting to writing and editing, to this day I’ve worked completely using my own intelligence and writing abilities, for better or for worse.
That doesn’t mean we won’t start using generative AI to help research and write our columns, and certainly other writers and editors covering this space are already using the technology to produce content.
I believe the generative AI that exists today—engines like ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0, for example—are capable of meeting the journalist standard of care for most of the work we produce as generally accepted in our profession. At least, with a little bit of editorial oversight, as some of the false starts using GenAI, like Sports Illustrated’s ill-fated attempt, have shown.
It doesn’t yet meet my standard of care. I still feel like it’s easier for me to do my own research, selecting my own sources, than it is to follow up on the research produced by GenAI. It’s easier for me to write something in my own words than it is for me to manipulate the sentences written by the technology.
Now, I keep a pretty light writing workload for myself, so I can afford the time to do everything using my own mind and hands. As my workload increases, I might warm more quickly to using generative AI.
I can see practitioners across the financial industry—especially small business owners and sole proprietors—having the same debate about the new technology. And like financial practitioners, journalists are bound to ethical principles.
So, dear readers, I’ll make this bargain with you: The moment I start to use generative AI to produce my material, I’ll tell you point blank. Any work I produce and publish where AI has been used to write, research or edit content, I will disclose not only its use, but also which AI tools were used and what specifically they were used for. I will never pretend that work generated by a machine was the product of human hands.
I’d like think that any journalist or publication who adopts this new technology to do their work would hold themselves to similar standard.
We promised last week that we would bring you some tips to avoid the “AI-washing” trend happening across the economy right now, so here’s the first one: Check out the companies in the DWN AI Index, who are all well-established tech incumbents recognized as leaders in AI. Such carefully constructed indexes probably won’t be the fastest way to find the AI unicorn that’s going to explode 10,000-times in value or price over the next few years, but it will find you the companies perhaps best positioned to take advantage of the new technology’s accelerating tailwinds.
We’ll have more for you on the topic in the weeks to come.
Let’s get to some AI headlines.
In this holiday-shortened week we still found more than 15 AI and Finance headlines from across the financial and technology industries.
READ ON…..
1. Arteria AI
Arteria AI announced its availability on Google Cloud Marketplace, providing customers the ability to turn documents into data to drive automation and intelligence into core business processes.
Google Cloud Marketplace lets users quickly purchase and run functional software that runs on Google Cloud.
Built by industry experts, data scientists and technologists, Arteria AI’s platform has been deployed at some of the world’s largest financial institutions to accelerate digital documentation and data processes and deliver faster, more accurate experiences to customers – all while lowering costs and minimizing risk. Arteria’s multi-modal models are tailored specifically to financial services, providing a last-mile delivery mechanism to integrate AI into critical business processes.
2. BNP Paribas
BNP Paribas and QuantumStreet AI announced the launch of a proprietary new BNP Paribas Cross Asset Trend and AI Index in Brazil with global plans.
The BNP Paribas Cross Asset Trend and AI Index is designed to combine traditional trend-based investing techniques with the AI-powered approach of trend-following signals powered by QuantumStreet AI, which are designed to identify cues that might otherwise be missed to allow for the targeting of optimal allocations across global asset classes. The strategy underpinning this Index captures a broad range of available information by leveraging both past data and forward-looking indicators via AI analysis. QuantumStreet AI utilizes IBM watsonx as the foundation for its generative AI platform.
By incorporating BNP Paribas’ proprietary trend analysis, leveraging its award-winning indexing capabilities and QuantumStreet AI’s renowned machine learning models for institutional investors, the index aims to provide a comprehensive view of cross-asset market trends, including equities, fixed income, and commodities and across geographies covering equities and bonds in the U.S., Europe and Japan. The BNP Paribas Cross Asset Trend and AI Index will be used to provide the basis for global structured products being made available to BNP Paribas’ clients, offering investors a unique perspective and way to access market trends and emerging opportunities.
3. Candor Technology
Candor Technology, a platform that uses artificial intelligence technology to automate loan underwriting and quality control for mortgage lenders, announced the appointment of Eric Rawlings as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Rawlings brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of driving technological excellence across diverse industries.
Rawlings is an IT leader with over two decades of experience, particularly in disaster recovery, governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC), among other technical skills. His expertise lies in leveraging technology to transform businesses, enhance scalability, and ensure robust security. Having held senior positions in technology management and information security, Rawlings has been pivotal in developing and managing financial services technology platforms. His strategic leadership has successfully guided technology teams across various sectors, including financial services, retail, healthcare, customer service, e-commerce, and the Department of Defense (DoD). Rawlings’ vision and direction have been fundamental in evolving start-up organizations into world-class industry leaders, demonstrating his ability to optimize operations and spearhead innovation in a dynamic technological landscape.
4. Canoe Intelligence
Canoe Intelligence (“Canoe”), the financial technology company powering smarter alts management, announced the completion of its Series C financing round of $36 million, led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives (“Goldman Sachs”) with participation from existing investors F-Prime Capital and Eight Roads. This latest round marks a significant milestone for Canoe, representing a more than 3x increase in company valuation since its Series B financing in 2023. With the additional capital, Canoe will continue its investment in building proprietary AI and machine learning technology to enhance its comprehensive back-to-front office capabilities.
Alternative investments now represent $22 trillion in assets under management, or 15% of global assets under management, highlighting the critical importance of advanced technology for managing investment documents and data. Through its automated infrastructure, Canoe drives improvements in data accuracy and access, team efficiency, and client satisfaction for investors. Canoe’s platform streamlines data management for a diverse client base of 325 institutional investors, capital allocators, wealth managers, family offices and asset servicing firms, including Blackstone and Hamilton Lane (Nasdaq: HLNE).
Since the completion of Canoe’s Series B funding round in February 2023 led by F-Prime Capital and joined by Eight Roads, Canoe has achieved 100% year-over-year growth in both clients and revenue. Canoe’s extensive partnerships with four of the top five global asset servicing firms, seven of the top ten global investment consultants, six of top ten fund of funds, five of the top ten endowments, 12 of the top 25 largest independent wealth managers, and many of the world’s largest single-family offices provide the firm with unique scale and market leadership. Canoe supports the alternative data management needs of over 1,000 LPs across more than 650,000 commitments and subscriptions to over 42,000 funds. This represents one of the most robust fund master databases in the world.
5. CLARA Analytics
Eastern Alliance Insurance Group (“Eastern Alliance”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of ProAssurance Corporation, has selected the CLARAty.ai platform developed by CLARA Analytics (“CLARA”), a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) technology for insurance claims optimization, to enhance medical outcomes for injured workers, improve reserve accuracy, and lighten administrative burdens for claims professionals.
CLARA’s claims intelligence platform integrates the company’s proven predictive analytics with advanced generative AI (GenAI) capabilities to offer a comprehensive claims management solution. The AI models analyze a wide range of data sources, including claims data, claim notes, medical records, and legal documents. This analysis enables the system to provide claims professionals with actionable recommendations for optimal next steps and proactive cost containment strategies, helping to prevent claim escalation.
Eastern Alliance is set to leverage CLARA’s comprehensive platform to address the challenge of escalating medical costs. Their strategy involves implementing a suite of CLARA’s key solutions: CLARA Optics for medical document intelligence, CLARA Treatment to direct care to the best-performing medical providers, and CLARA Triage to help focus on high-severity claims early in the claims’ life cycle.
6. Curinos
Curinos, a global data intelligence business that brings together industry-exclusive expertise, insights and analytics for leading financial institutions, and Adrenaline, an end-to-end brand experience company helping banks and credit unions grow, have teamed up to incorporate Curinos’ Distribution Optimizer data tool into Adrenaline’s Connected Intelligence offering for banks and credit unions.
Pairing the real-time, relevant data analytics with Adrenaline’s strategic insights and expertise will help level the playing field for smaller and mid-market financial institutions by informing decisions aimed at maximizing the growth potential of their retail networks.
The Distribution Optimizer integrates vast amounts of public bank and proprietary data into a consistent analytical framework for financial institutions to evaluate their current network and identify future opportunities.
7. Deloitte
Deloitte announced the creation of a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help clients around the world scale their Generative Artificial Intelligence, data and analytics and quantum computing capabilities by using AWS services, such as Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q and Amazon Braket. Together, the two organizations will establish an Innovation Lab, helping clients explore future technologies like artificial general intelligence (AGI), quantum machine learning (ML) and autonomous robotics, and work to help joint clients innovate and solve industry-specific issues using the capabilities that Generative AI has to offer. In addition, the two organizations will make funding available to support customers taking successful proofs of concept (POCs) into production. The effort is aligned to Deloitte’s IndustryAdvantage™ initiative, a strategic $2 billion investment to co-innovate with eligible clients and alliances to develop industry-focused solutions.
The Innovation Lab will allow Deloitte and AWS engineers to collaborate on building industry-specific solutions across financial services; government and public sector; life sciences and health care; media and telecommunications; consumer; and energy, resources and industrials. This will build on the work Deloitte and AWS are already doing to support customers across industries with Generative AI, through existing industry offerings such as TrueServe™, a suite of leading contact center technologies with built-in-AI to enhance responsiveness, and the Converge™ by Deloitte portfolio — specifically its BankingSuite solution to help modernize financial institutions’ legacy stack and ConvergeSECURITY, which aids cloud transformation efforts through AI-enabled cloud security.
For example, Deloitte’s C-Suite AI™ for CFOs is one of the first POCs being developed out of the lab. It builds large language models (LLMs) that can simplify enterprise contract workflows, offers a custom GPT to answer CFO questions, generates investor documentation drafts and automates customer service. It enables the streamlining of financial functions in the key areas of planning, operations, reporting and investor relations. C-Suite AI is a tool powered by NVIDIA to help financial services industry clients build custom LLMs with Amazon Bedrock.
8. Esker
Esker announced new capabilities for its Source-to-Pay suite, incorporating sustainability features that are essential for business growth while complying with the increased environmental, social and governance (ESG) regulations worldwide.
Weaving environmental management, social responsibility and long-term sustainability into source-to-pay (S2P) processes helps the Office of the CFO manage continually evolving regulatory frameworks and mitigate risk, while enhancing visibility, reporting and collaboration. Additionally, it’s about recognizing the immense potential of sustainable practices in driving innovation, efficiency and, ultimately, profitability.
New capabilities in Esker’s Source-to-Pay suite track ESG metrics that align with regulatory frameworks, monitor performance of these indicators and identify areas for improvement. By facilitating the creation of transparent reports and displaying easy-to-read dashboards, these tools can provide a clear and accurate picture of a company’s environmental impact. Internal CO2 emissions can also be optimized by analyzing supplier invoices, resulting in significant cost savings.
9. ESQ Data Solutions
Financial Institutions, retailers, managed service providers and cash-in-transit companies are increasingly seeking comprehensive, hardware-agnostic, world-class solutions for self-service and cash ecosystem endpoint management (ATMs, TCRs, SmartSafes, etc.), monitoring, and predictive analytics.
Responding to this market demand, ESQ Data Solutions and CashPilot have agreed to a strategic alignment of their software solutions to deliver enhanced value and innovation to their global client base. This collaboration marks a significant milestone in the industry, combining the unique strengths of both organizations to create state-of-the-art software solutions. The combined solutions, integrated with AI, provides end-to-end workflow management, process automation and cash management software that meets the evolving needs in endpoint device and cash ecosystem monitoring, management and data-driven business intelligence for the financial services industry.
Austria based CashPilot provides Artificial Intelligence based end-to-end modular cash management solutions to optimize cash logistics for banks, retailers and cash-in-transit companies globally. Cash cycle optimization, ATM monitoring, cash reconciliation, and seamless tracking & tracing unleashes all conceivable optimization potentials leading to cost reductions and maximal efficiency while ensuring highest cash availability. Visit www.cashpilot.com for more information.
10. Eton Solutions
Eton Solutions, a global leader in cloud-based services for family offices of the future, is launching AtlasFive, its ERP platform, for family offices in India. Eton Solutions also announced the family office of Infosys’ founder, Narayana Murthy, Catamaran, as its launch customer. This underscores its commitment to offering a comprehensive, innovative and localised ERP platform for family offices across the country. Headquartered in North Carolina, USA, it has had a presence in India for the past 5 years with over 300 employees at their Global Technology Center in Bengaluru supporting AtlasFive® clients globally.
Catamaran will use Eton Solutions’ AtlasFive® platform to streamline its investment portfolio management and enhance operational planning, reporting and compliance. Eton Solutions has developed a highly sophisticated ERP platform, AtlasFive®, a fully integrated, secure cloud-native AI-driven software tailored to meet the complex needs of family offices, currently managing over $781 billion for 665 families worldwide. Over 11.5 million transactions are processed annually with 92,000 entities on this platform. The platform integrates all operational facets of a family office into a cohesive solution, emphasising efficiency and operating leverage.
Eton Solutions is also planning to set up a presence in GIFT City, Gujarat, in the near future to support the growth of its services provided to clients globally. This new Technology Center is a key milestone for the company’s expansion strategy and will serve as a hub for Eton Solutions’ operations in the country, allowing it to leverage the unique advantages of GIFT City’s world-class infrastructure and regulatory environment.
11. Guidewire
Guidewire (NYSE: GWRE) and EvolutionIQ announced that the new Built by Guidewire EvolutionIQ integration is now available in the Guidewire Marketplace to ClaimCenter users on Guidewire Cloud.
EvolutionIQ provides workers compensation claims professionals with specific, artificial intelligence (AI) powered guidance to achieve better claims outcomes. EvolutionIQ’s Claims Guidance ingests and analyzes structured and unstructured claims data like medical reports and interview notes to produce deep insights. It surfaces the most actionable claims to make best use of adjuster and specialist capacity, while delivering dynamic suggestions for the most effective actions to progress a claim toward earlier return to work and/or resolution. The EvolutionIQ Built by Guidewire accelerator integrates EvolutionIQ’s Claims Guidance for Workers’ Compensation with Guidewire ClaimCenter.
Built by Guidewire integrations are pre-built and standardized by Guidewire to speed cloud delivery and maintenance. Leveraging the Integration Framework for Guidewire Cloud, developers can implement integrations between InsuranceSuite and third-party apps using multiple APIs, messaging systems, or protocols with ease.
12. iFOREX
iFOREX launched an artificial intelligence tool designed to enhance the trading experience for its users. This AI assistant is now live on the iFOREX website, providing traders with instant answers to their questions about trading with this renowned broker.
In a bid to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving trading industry, iFOREX has developed an AI tool that offers users the ability to ask a wide range of trading-related questions and receive immediate, accurate responses. Whether you’re a seasoned trader or a newcomer to the trading world, this AI assistant is set to become an invaluable resource for all your trading inquiries.
The new AI assistant on the iFOREX platform is designed to address the needs of both novice and tech-savvy traders, who demand quick and reliable information. From understanding market concepts to navigating the iFOREX trading platform, users can now rely on this intelligent tool for comprehensive support.
13. Open Lending
Open Lending Corporation announced a partnership with Securian Financial Group, Inc. (“Securian Financial”). The partnership enables Open Lending to provide insurance coverage through its flagship Lenders Protection™ program as market volatility compromises automotive loan portfolios.
Securian Financial joins a roster of highly rated carriers that power Lenders Protection’s built-in insurance coverage. Using alternative data and AI-powered risk analysis, Lenders Protection prices and structures automotive loans according to each applicant’s unique financial profile, enabling financial institutions to securely offer loan opportunities to near- and non-prime borrowers.
14. Sparq
Sparq, a U.S.-based provider of outsourced digital engineering for technology driven and Fortune 1000 companies, has acquired Kingsmen Software, a U.S.-based engineering firm offering generative AI strategy, consulting and full stack development in the financial sector.
Kingsmen, based in Charlotte, N.C., built its foundation around enterprise banking, payments, and capital markets, expanding into mid-market and late stage FinTech. The company brings expertise in custom software delivery, product design and technology advisory. Kingsmen has stayed on the forefront of technology by developing proficiency in Generative AI strategy, consulting, and execution. As part of Sparq, Kingsmen’s clients will have access to more offerings and a greater ability to scale globally to meet their needs.
Founded in 2013, Kingsmen quickly grew into one of Charlotte’s preeminent technology services companies, delivering software consulting and development services to some of the country’s largest financial institutions. The company has won numerous workplace awards and is recognized as one of the foremost leaders in FinTech and banking.
15. Upstart
Texans Credit Union, one of the largest credit unions in Texas with more than 123,000 members and $2.2 billion in assets, has announced their partnership with Upstart (NASDAQ: UPST), the leading artificial intelligence (AI) lending marketplace, to offer personal loans to consumers.
Texans Credit Union started lending as a partner on the Upstart Referral Network in August 2023. With the Upstart Referral Network, qualified personal loan applicants on Upstart.com who meet Texans Credit Union’s credit policies will receive tailored offers as they seamlessly transition into a Texans Credit Union-branded experience to complete the online member application and closing process.
16. Waton Securities International
Waton Securities International Limited (Waton Securities), a licensed broker in Hong Kong and a pioneering SaaS service provider, officially launched its latest product, the AI Investor Relations Officer (AI-IRO), at the 10th Investor Relations Awards organized by the Hong Kong Investor Relations Association (HKIRA).
Designed to meet the distinct needs of public companies, the AI-IRO aims to accelerate the practice of investor relations into the advanced era of artificial intelligence. By leveraging comprehensive big data from the capital markets, AI-IRO significantly boosts the productivity of investor relations tasks and enhances corporate brand image.
Technically, Waton Securities has partnered strategically with Amazon Web Services, utilizing their cutting-edge Claude series of large language models and strong tech support. This, combined with advanced vector knowledge bases, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text technologies, ensures robust AI performance. The firm also employs state-of-the-art encryption and strict data management processes to protect information security and ensure compliance with disclosure standards.
