AI & Finance™ | News for the Week Ending 8/9/24

Accenture Federal Services has won an $81 million artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI / ML) contract from the Social Security Administration (SSA). The company will deliver end-to-end back office intelligent automation services to transform the way 250 million retiree and survivors’ benefits documents are processed every year. The forms are currently being received and managed via email, mail, and fax. 

The Social Security Administration has already successfully deployed an enterprise hyperautomation platform that uses advanced deep learning and computer vision techniques to identify data from the agency’s electronic folder, extract text, transcribe data with the highest level of accuracy, and speed processing through downstream business processes. The platform uses internal enterprise data to intelligently and rapidly keep pace with high demand, expedite decision making, and control costs. 

Accenture Federal Services will now take this project to the next level providing the licenses necessary to deliver an end-to-end, Infrastructure as a Software (IaaS) roadmap for intelligent automation installation, testing, and training. 

S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) and Accenture (NYSE: ACN) have formed a strategic collaboration to fuel generative AI (gen AI) innovation across the financial services industry. The collaboration includes initiatives to empower customers and S&P Global’s workforce to adopt and innovate with gen AI at scale. S&P Global is equipping all 35,000 of its employees with the necessary skills to leverage this transformative technology through a comprehensive gen AI learning program that will be rolled out in August. The companies also plan to work together to enhance AI development and benchmarking solutions for the financial services industry. 

The learning program will leverage services from Accenture LearnVantage, including curated and customized content to drive AI fluency for S&P Global’s workforce. It will help S&P Global effectively address the industry’s evolving talent requirements and empower employees at all levels to leverage the advantages of gen AI. 

Beyond the AI learning initiative, the companies also plan to enhance AI development and benchmarking throughout the financial services industry. The collaboration will bring together Accenture’s Foundation Model Services, which help companies manage and scale large language models (LLMs), with S&P AI Benchmarks by Kensho, a solution that evaluates LLMs’ performance for financial and quantitative use cases. Customers can use Accenture’s proprietary gen AI “switchboard” to select and customize models based on the business context or use case, as well as its managed services for finetuning and prompt engineering. They will also have access to S&P AI Benchmarks to evaluate the AI model’s performance and ability to solve complex financial queries via S&P Global’s standardized and transparent third-party verification. This collaboration will enable banks, insurers, and capital markets firms to strengthen the performance and efficacy of their solutions while ensuring that responsible AI is built into every use. 

Acuity Knowledge Partners (Acuity), a leading provider of bespoke research, analytics, staffing and technology solutions to the financial services sector, welcomes Jon O’Donnell as its new Chief Operating Officer (COO). 

Jon brings to Acuity over 16 years of leadership experience at IBM, where he successfully led EMEA Business and Technology Consulting Divisions of up to 15,000 practitioners and $3 billion per annum turnover, delivering impressive market growth. He was part of the Global Leadership Team of IBM Consulting, and held critical leadership positions across numerous markets, including EMEA and North America. 

As COO for Acuity, O’Donnell will join the Executive Committee and oversee the Digital Solutions Group, Global Strategy and various enablement teams including Information Technology, Information Security, and Legal. 

At-Bay, the InsurSec provider for the digital age, announced today the appointment of Ken Riegler as President, At-Bay Insurance. Riegler brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of success in the insurance industry, and is poised to advance At-Bay’s continued growth and service excellence. 

Riegler joins At-Bay with over 25 years of experience in commercial underwriting, alternative risk management and distribution. Most recently, Riegler served as AIG’s President of North America General Insurance, Retail and Field Operations, overseeing a diverse multi-billion dollar portfolio including Property, Casualty, Financial Lines, and Specialty. Prior to this he was the President of North America Casualty for XL Catlin (now AXA XL) and President of ACE Group’s Multinational Client Group for North America (now Chubb). 

Risk to technology represents the most important emerging commercial risk in insurance. With its unique InsurSec platform, At-Bay brings unmatched security expertise to help customers avoid technology risk. In this new role, Riegler will focus on accelerating At-Bay’s growth to become a leader in Excess & Surplus (E&S) insurance, fostering relationships with valued broker partners and clients. Kristie Felton, Head of Insurance, will continue to oversee underwriting, partnerships and field operations, driving the growth and expansion she has spearheaded since taking on the role. 

Bridgetower Capital, a leading global provider of AI and Web3 platform services and infrastructure, with InterVision Systems, a premier Managed Service Provider and leader in innovative IT solutions, today announced a strategic partnership to launch robust, secure and scalable global Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain solutions and services. 

The companies bring to market a transformative proprietary suite of AI and Web3 services, uniting the dynamic fields of Web3 and AI in ways that will accelerate adoption of the technologies in a variety of industries around the world. These services address key challenges such as AI lineage, sovereignty, and authenticity, while facilitating the global distribution of AI models and blockchain applications through secure and efficient networks. The AI/Web3 suite solutions include AI modeling, building and training Large Language Models (LLM), and AI-driven data analytics. 

The Bridgetower/InterVision partnership will also focus on enhancing InterVision’s AI-driven platforms, a suite of GenAI accelerators built for improved customer experiences and developed for rapid customization and deployment. These platforms empower businesses to quickly implement advanced AI solutions, reducing development time and complexity to deliver innovative products and services. 

CLARA Analytics (“CLARA”), a leading provider of artificial intelligence (AI) technology for insurance claims optimization, launched Claims Document Intelligence Pro, a major milestone in the evolution of its transformative insurance claims AI platform. The introduction of Claims DocIntel Pro (formerly CLARA Optics) marks groundbreaking advances with its deeper contextual analysis of legal demands and medical records. CLARA’s cutting-edge innovation combines best-in-class GenAI with proprietary AI tools that identify salient details, assess the risk of escalation, and offer actionable recommendations to claims managers. 

CLARA’s Claims DocIntel Pro has been designed from the ground up to address the specific challenges associated with claims management. In a market where generalist competitors typically rely on users to generate prompts, Claims DocIntel Pro stands out by offering a preconfigured experience and deep contextual insights, with no training required. It proactively offers actionable, data-driven recommendations from documents that enable high-value claim interventions, saving time and preventing losses from escalating. 

One of CLARA’s distinguishing advantages is its large contributory database of closed claims, which draws from the experience of multiple carriers to develop a deep contextual understanding of medical and legal risk. By tapping into a vast history of prior cases, the company empowers claims management teams with deep cognition that recognizes patterns, pinpoints hidden risk factors, assesses potential outcomes, and delivers actionable recommendations. The product delves deeply into medical and claims contexts, identifying treatment patterns, omissions by plaintiff attorneys, and critical language like maximum medical improvement (MMI) and return to work (RTW). 

Deloitte and Anthropic today announced they will collaborate to accelerate the adoption of Generative AI (GenAI) across public and private sector clients. This alliance combines Deloitte’s industry experience with Anthropic’s Claude model family to develop customized, enterprise-grade AI solutions that prioritize the trustworthy and human-centered use of GenAI. 

This alliance aims to help Deloitte’s clients build and deploy GenAI applications by using the Claude model family—Anthropic’s large language models (LLMs). Deloitte’s Trustworthy AI™ framework aligns with Anthropic’s Constitutional AI approach to training LLMs that include ethical safeguards. This helps provide the governance and guardrails necessary for organizations to responsibly use GenAI applications across teams and functions—particularly those in highly regulated industries such as financial services, health care and government. 

Through this alliance, Deloitte expects to train more than 15,000 professionals on Anthropic’s Claude family of LLMs. Deloitte has already begun development of several Anthropic-powered business applications that will be available this year for use by commercial and government clients. The first solution, Deloitte’s C Suite AI™ for CFOs, is designed to simplify enterprise contract workflows and offers a custom GPT to answer CFO questions, generate investor documentation drafts and automate customer service. It streamlines 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 using Amazon Bedrock from Amazon Web Services (AWS).  

Guidewire (NYSE: GWRE) announces Kufri release, its latest cloud update, which extends Guidewire HazardHub to 19 additional countries, enhances underwriting and billing processes, facilitates cloud migrations, and streamlines developer experiences. 

HazardHub is the most comprehensive set of property risk data and peril risk scoring in the P&C insurance industry. Insurers use HazardHub data to underwrite quickly and more accurately, as well as to improve pricing. 

Options Technology, a trailblazer in capital markets infrastructure, today announced the expansion of its Toronto office. The expansion is part of Options’ strategic growth in North America and demonstrates the firm’s continued commitment to its clients and partners across the Canadian financial markets. 

The new office, at 141 Adelaide Street W, is situated in the center of Toronto’s financial district, giving even closer proximity to clients and partners, and enhancing the firm’s ability to deliver innovative solutions to its clients across the global capital markets. 

With over a decade of experience in foreign exchange technologies and E-trading platforms, Robert Strawbridge, VP Head of Canada, has been instrumental in driving Options’ success in the region. His deep knowledge of the industry and vision have helped establish the business as a key player in Toronto’s vibrant financial technology landscape. 

Pagaya Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: PGY) (the “Company” or “Pagaya”), a global technology company delivering AI-driven product solutions for the financial ecosystem, and OneMain Financial (NYSE: OMF) (“OneMain”), the leader in offering nonprime consumers responsible access to credit, today announced a new partnership. 

Pagaya’s proprietary, AI-driven lending technology enables fintechs, banks, and other loan originators to provide broader credit access for their customers. Through this partnership, OneMain’s auto lending business will leverage Pagaya’s technology to support the company’s ability to serve more qualified customers that are outside its existing credit criteria. The two firms are also working to expand their partnership towards a broader enterprise agreement. 

Pagaya Technologies LTD. (NASDAQ: PGY) (“Pagaya” or “the Company”), a global technology company delivering AI-driven product solutions for the financial ecosystem, today announced the appointment of Ralph L. Leung as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Commercial Officer, as it continues to strategically enhance its AI-driven network and product suite to be the premier consumer credit technology solution for the banking ecosystem. 

In this newly created role, Leung will lead Pagaya’s best-in-class capital markets function to continue to drive innovation and strengthen and expand the Company’s funding capabilities. He will also spearhead Pagaya’s monetization strategy and operations for its rapidly growing lending partner network, and oversee the Company’s AI-driven research, data and credit strategy capabilities. 

Most recently, Leung served as CFO for Achieve, a leading fintech focused on digital personal finance. There, he drove the company’s profitable growth strategy while implementing a multi-year digital transformation program, established a deep corporate equity and debt capital structure with leading investors, and built a more diversified and innovative capital markets funding model to fuel Achieve’s lending platform. Prior to Achieve, Leung was CFO at Fivestars, a national CRM and payments network for small and medium businesses, and led the company through a successful exit to global payments leader SumUp in 2021. Earlier in his career, Leung also served as a senior investment banker at Morgan Stanley, advising global technology and fintech clients on strategic M&A, equity and debt transactions. 

PureFacts Financial Solutions (“PureFacts”), an award-winning SaaS provider of end-to-end revenue management solutions for the investment industry, announced today the completion of a majority investment from GrowthCurve Capital (“GrowthCurve”). PureFacts founder and CEO Robert Madej and the company’s employees will retain their interest in PureFacts. 

Founded in 1997, PureFacts helps many of the world’s top wealth management, asset management and asset servicing firms manage and grow their revenues. The PureRevenue Platform enables scalable revenue management by powering the entire revenue lifecycle. User firms can calculate, collect, distribute and optimize their revenues using the PureFacts fees engine, incentive compensation application and business intelligence solutions powered by a single system of record for revenue management. 

GrowthCurve Capital is a private equity firm focused on building businesses through data, analytics and machine learning, combined with a comprehensive approach to human capital. The GrowthCurve investment will propel PureFacts along its growth trajectory by supporting new product development, continued market expansion, and the development and use of leading-edge artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics for the investment industry. 

Savvy Wealth has successfully raised a $15.5 million Series A-2 funding round, completing their $26.5 million Series A. This round was led by Canvas Ventures with contributions from Thrive Capital, Brewer Lane, Index Ventures, and others, bringing Savvy Wealth’s total funding to over $33 million since its inception three years ago. 

This achievement coincides with the company’s third anniversary. From humble beginnings in a small NYC apartment, Savvy Wealth has grown into a significant player in the wealth management sector, boasting an affiliated investment advisory firm with over 30 financial advisors managing assets exceeding $700 million across the country. With $1 billion AUM as their next target, Savvy Wealth is committed to delivering exceptional value to both advisors and clients. CEO Hugo Gomez remarked, “This achievement is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the Savvy team, and I’m more confident than ever that this is only the beginning.” 

Savvy Wealth aims to provide technology-enabled solutions to streamline the wealth management industry by eliminating time-consuming middle and back-office tasks, thus allowing advisors to focus more on their clients. Presently, advisors spend around 40% of their time on these tasks, and an additional 10+ hours per week on self-marketing and compliance. 

Scienaptic AI, a leading global provider of AI-powered credit underwriting platforms, announced today that Louisiana-based Barksdale Federal Credit Union, serving over 164,000 members, has selected its platform to expand credit access for its member community. Scienaptic’s regulatory-compliant AI platform will enable Barksdale FCU to make sharper risk predictions, automate decisions, and offer more inclusive lending to its members. 

Founded in 1954, Barksdale Federal Credit Union was established to serve military and civilian personnel at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City. While continuing to support the men and women of the base and their families, Barksdale Federal now serves over 1,000 companies, associations, and churches. Committed to enhancing the economic well-being of its members, including those of modest means, Barksdale Federal’s foundation remains as crucial today as it was in 1954. With assets surpassing $2.2 billion, it stands as Louisiana’s largest locally-owned credit union and proudly serves Texas and Arkansas through over 30 locations. 

CIBC Innovation Banking announced today that it has provided $4.5M CAD in growth capital financing to support Wisedocs’ mission to both further broaden its client base and to expand its product offering. Wisedocs’ artificial intelligence (AI) software platform summarizes claim files for the insurance industry to enable fast and inexpensive medical record reviews. 

Insurance carriers, legal firms, as well as third-party medical examiners within the insurance ecosystem leverage Wisedocs’ AI-driven platform to efficiently deliver meaningful reviews of complex medical records. With this support from CIBC, Wisedocs is poised to continue its role as a market leader in the industry to manage the claims process within an intelligent technology platform leveraging state-of-the-art generative AI. Following an oversubscribed Series A financing round of $12.7M in January 2024, CIBC’s investment enables in the company’s continued growth and expansion. 

Writer, the full-stack generative AI platform delivering transformative ROI for the world’s leading enterprises, today announced Palmyra-Med-70b and Palmyra-Fin-70b, two industry-leading specialized large language models (LLMs) specifically designed for the healthcare and financial services industries. Beginning today, these cutting-edge models are available as open models from NVIDIA, Baseten, and Hugging Face, as well as via the Writer Platform. They bring unparalleled domain expertise and accuracy to medical and financial generative AI applications, surpassing the performance of comparable models with single (zero-shot) attempts. 

Palmyra-Fin-70b stands as a game-changer in financial generative AI applications. It is now the only financial services model offered as an NVIDIA NIM inference microservice and available from ai.nvidia.com. 

Palmyra-Fin-70b shows unparalleled proficiency in financial forecasting, investment analysis, risk evaluation, fraud detection, and asset allocation strategy, and it can power these use cases with unprecedented accuracy. Leveraging a vast corpus of financial data and incorporating state-of-the-art fine tuning techniques, Palmyra-Fin possesses specialized knowledge that enables it to understand and analyze financial information with extraordinary precision. Financial institutions and businesses can harness its capabilities to gain actionable insights and make informed decisions. 

Yext, Inc. (NYSE: YEXT), the leading digital presence platform for multi-location brands, today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Hearsay Systems, a global leader in digital client engagement for financial services. The acquisition marks a significant milestone for Yext and the industry. 

The combination of Yext and Hearsay Systems is intended to produce the industry’s first end-to-end digital presence platform, combining Yext’s cutting-edge digital presence management capabilities with Hearsay Systems’ compliant engagement solutions across social media, websites, text, and voice. This strategic integration will enable multi-location enterprises to consolidate all of their digital marketing channels in one platform and leverage the industry’s most extensive set of data, insights, and recommendations to convert prospects into customers faster. 

Hearsay Systems’ compliance-driven solutions, trusted by top financial firms, help expand reach, optimize customer interactions, and ensure regulatory and brand compliance. By integrating Hearsay’s social media, text, voice, and compliance features with Yext’s digital presence management and AI technology, the combined platform will offer an exceptional suite of tools for managing customer touchpoints and enhancing performance across all channels. Yext’s acquisition of Hearsay also boosts value by enabling robust CRM integration, including with systems like Salesforce. This integration will synchronize contact information, track client interactions, and streamline and automate workflows, providing businesses with unprecedented customer journey insights and performance improvement recommendations.