As organizations start thinking about the coming year and finalizing their budgets, now is the time to ensure their technology roadmap is in place as they prepare to implement new tools, like AI. Manish Pandey, Senior Vice-President, and Head of Banking at JIFFY.ai shares with Digital Wealth News™ readers what financial institutions must do now as they prepare for 2025 and beyond.
“One of the key things that has evolved this past year, and will continue to do so in 2025, is AI adoption. Many financial institutions have identified areas where AI can solve everyday problems by increasing efficiency,” Pandey says.
More Money for AI
Pandey comments that there will be significant technology spending on AI investments in the financial institution sector in 2025, with open banking and embedded finance at the top. For these forward-thinking institutions, their C-suite executives understand that AI must be their #1 priority if they intend to meet the market’s demands.
He points out a 2024 survey conducted by Wipro, in which over 100 U.S. wealth industry executives indicated that a sizable portion of their 2025 IT budgets will be allocated toward investments in AI.
“Spending on AI investments is expected to more than double—from 16 to 37 percent—within the next 3-5 years. It’s great to see that the wealth industry leaders are thinking about AI,” he says.
The two areas where AI spending is profoundly increasing:
- Unique service offerings
- Cybersecurity
Unique Service Offerings Require Elevated Tech
In the financial world, even though open banking and embedded finance have existed for quite some time, consumers expect to engage in these unique high-demand service offerings from remote locations. The institution must provide those services outside the traditional brick-and-mortar because consumers no longer want to go to in to do these things.
“Financial institutions must implement AI to help solidify their open banking and embedded finance opportunities. I’m very bullish about AI because, considering all the challenges that they are going through, there is one technology that solves many of the gaps in these areas—AI. Very few technologies can claim that kind of problem-solving ability,” Pandey says.
When human employees are focused on other value creation, AI can do much of the legwork regarding data capture, follow-ups, reminders, and routine activities. From building positive experiences to completing an action, AI-powered solutions eliminate many frictions consumers and employees face today.
AI and Data Security
From a data security perspective, AI can find anomalies and inspect code, detecting a potential hack much quicker than a human can realize it is happening. Cyber security threats have magnified since the onset of COVID. While those threats will not come down significantly, more organizations are using AI tools to prevent and control these attacks.
“Even if you’re a small to mid-sized financial institution, you must have a plan in place regarding cybersecurity. AI could help solve security monitoring issues for you starting in 2025,” Pandey says.
3 AI Use Cases for 2025: Consumer, Employee and Organization
Regardless of the size of your organization, it’s imperative that you examine the use cases for AI: consumer-facing use cases, employee-facing use cases, and the risk, cybersecurity, and compliance areas.
“Consumer-facing use cases include how your organization interacts with consumers during the onboarding and servicing phases and throughout the relationship’s growth. Those are the times that will allow you to take your organization’s onboarding to the next level using AI,” says Pandey.
From the employee’s perspective, what happens during the consumer onboarding process is critical. A lot of data is gathered from the consumer: personal information (Know Your Customer or KYC), what kind of transactions they do, and so on. It’s vital to onboard consumers quickly without compromising on the safety and security of their personal information.
AI plays a significant role in capturing, extracting, and processing consumer data across the organization’s technology systems. All that can happen seamlessly in one workflow, reducing the time involved and making the processes safe and secure. Risks are reduced because AI is running in the background, ensuring that the consumer information matches across all systems. At the same time, it continues to monitor all consumer information from a cyber security perspective.
“In servicing situations that are either consumer self-service or employee-serviced, AI is already verifying the device, IP address, phone numbers, etc., from a compliance risk perspective. AI will play an increasingly significant role in these areas in 2025 and beyond,” Pandey adds.
For these reasons, organizations must plan their AI technology roadmap now, vet Financial Services AI solution providers like JIFFY.ai, and assemble a dedicated in-house AI team to get started right away.
