The hits keep coming, don’t they?
November may be the cruelest month for an artificial intelligence and financial technology journalist, because there’s so much going on that we risk missing all of the other things going on in the world around us. You know you’re really honed in on your topic when a presidential election feels like a nagging distraction.
Thankfully, that distraction is gone now, and we won’t bother you with the transition and administration building news that is dominating political headlines right now because we need to talk about some of the latest data in AI—before we get to a nice, fat list of weekly headlines, of course.
This week we’ll start with a pair of surveys from UK and U.S.-based enablement platform Seismic. In the first survey, which queried 330 financial services leaders, Seismic found that 92% of financial services firms plan to invest in new technology over the next year. Of these, 97% said that AI advancements are a major driving force behind their increase in technology investment. Of the greater survey, 92% believed that AI would be indispensable in providing personalized customer experience over the next years. The respondents predicted an average 31% increase in their enablement technology stack budget. These results jive with top-line results from an Infosys survey of 2,600 marketing leaders released last week, in which 98% of respondents said their businesses were using AI in their marketing efforts.
A smaller, 101-respondent survey from Seismic polled financial services employes at or above the manager level. Almost all of these respondents believed that incorporating AI into their technology stack would generate revenue increases, an average of a 52% annual increase over the next five years. 93% of the respondents agreed that AI would transform the financial services industry over the next five years, with the leading impact areas in descending order being: sales, marketing, operations, risk and compliance, coaching and training, and legal and audit. Respondents also warned that they were struggling to get both team members and executives to buy-in to the new technologies.
We’ll close with yet another AI-related marketing report. Market research firm Technavio just released a global artificial intelligence market report in which they predicted the global AI market would grow from $237.4 billion from 2024 to 2028, at a compound annual growth rate of 30.07%. Wow!
Let’s get to some headlines.
Confluence Technologies
Confluence Technologies, Inc. (“Confluence”), a global technology solutions provider for regulatory, analytics, and investor communications for the investment management industry, today announced that the Confluence Evaluated Fixed Income Pricing data feed is now available on Snowflake Marketplace. This gives firms more streamlined access to Confluence’s wide range of fixed income pricing data, increasing efficiency in fund calculations.
By leveraging the Snowflake AI Data Cloud, Confluence is providing investment management clients with independent end-of-day and intra-day valuations for their fund net asset value (NAV) calculations. Clients can also run portfolio valuations for reporting, independent price verification (IPV), and index pricing.
Clients who leverage Confluence Evaluated Fixed Income Pricing on Snowflake Marketplace can access a wide range of global fixed-income products (including years of historical data). The data set currently covers over one million fixed-income instruments, proportionally divided into three major sectors: APAC, EMEA, and Americas. In some cases, historical data goes back 20+ years.
Delta Data
Delta Data, a Terminus Capital Partners company and trusted provider of global investment fund software solutions, is excited to announce its first strategic implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to optimize internal processes and enhance client service. This initiative reflects Delta Data’s commitment to pioneering technology-driven efficiencies that bring measurable value to its clients.
To responsibly support these initiatives, Delta Data has established an AI security policy to maintain stringent data security and safeguard corporate IP. This policy mandates that team members only use approved AI tools and models defined in its AI acceptable use policy, ensuring the protection of client data and intellectual property.
Initially focusing on internal AI applications, Delta Data is prioritizing efficiency and accuracy improvements within its operations before extending these capabilities directly to clients. The AI team at Delta Data is actively exploring additional AI use cases across various solutions, reinforcing the company’s commitment to continuous innovation and a proactive approach to technological advancement.
Dow Jones
Dow Jones today announced it has expanded its ownership stake in Ripjar, a global leader in data intelligence software. This strategic investment reflects Dow Jones’s ongoing commitment to providing leading-edge AI to the risk and compliance community. The move is the latest in a series of investments and initiatives that have helped transform Dow Jones to become a leading information service provider.
Since its founding, Ripjar has pioneered new technologies to protect financial firms and enterprises from the rising threat of money laundering, fraud, cyber crime and terrorism. Dow Jones has partnered with Ripjar since 2018 to deliver advanced risk screening and monitoring solutions to thousands of compliance customers. It first announced an equity investment in Ripjar in 2023.
Dow Jones’s executive vice president and general manager of Risk & Research Joel Lange will work closely alongside Ripjar’s newly appointed CEO Tom Obermaier and majority investor Long Ridge Equity Partners to grow its operations internationally, as well as supporting new and existing customers to navigate a complex compliance landscape.
EPAM Systems
EPAM Systems, Inc. (NYSE: EPAM), a leading digital transformation services and product engineering company, today announced the release of the StatGPT 2.0 Platform, created in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for evaluating and testing by Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX) sponsor organizations and selected national statistical organizations. The Platform will be shown at the 2024 IMF Statistical Forum: Measuring the Implications of AI on the Economy.
EPAM’s StatGPT 1.0, was initially presented in October 2023 at the World SDMX Congress in Bahrain and then shown at numerous events, including the UNECE meeting of the Conference of European Statisticians and the various SDMX forums. EPAM created StatGPT based on EPAM DIAL and EPAM QuantHub platforms as a cornerstone of its next-generation conversational data exploration and analytics solutions.
SDMX is a set of technical standards designed to describe statistical data and metadata, normalize their exchange and improve their efficient sharing across statistical and similar organizations.[1] It is published as ISO 17369.[2] The SDMX initiative also receives support from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the European Central Bank (ECB), Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), and the World Bank.
GFT Technologies
GFT Technologies is collaborating with NVIDIA to bring advanced AI solutions to the financial services and manufacturing sectors. The collaboration will combine GFT’s deep expertise in digitalising global banks, financial institutions and manufacturers with NVIDIA’s AI software tools and accelerated computing platform for generative AI to drive a new level of innovation and efficiency in both industries.
GFT will use the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform – which includes NVIDIA NIM microservices, NVIDIA Triton Inference Server, NVIDIA NeMo, and NIM Agent Blueprints – and the NVIDIA Omniverse platform to develop tailor-made AI applications, focusing on the manufacturing and financial services sectors.
For manufacturers, applications include digital twin technology and visual inspection tools to enhance quality control and operational efficiency. GFT will also collaborate with NVIDIA on fine-tuning open-source large language models (LLMs) for banks and insurance companies. Financial services institutions will be able to leverage these custom LLMs to enhance AI agents, as well as improve operations including fraud detection, customer service and risk reduction.
Guidewire
Guidewire (NYSE: GWRE) announced Shift Technology as its strategic partner for insurance-based decisioning solutions. Shift’s products enable artificial intelligence (AI) powered fraud detection and investigation, underwriting risk detection, and subrogation detection. The expanded partnership will deliver a joint solution that will enable the rapid integration of Shift’s fraud detection technology with Guidewire’s solutions, improving efficiency and claims handler productivity.
A PartnerConnect Technology Premier partner and leader in AI-driven decisioning for the insurance industry, Shift delivers solutions to insurers that help automate and optimize critical insurance decisions. Shift has been a pioneer of AI-powered fraud detection since its establishment in 2014 and was an early adopter of large language models and generative AI in 2020, making it a leading-edge fraud detection solution provider for insurers.
Named a ‘Luminary’ by Celent for Insurance Fraud-Detection Solutions in 2024, with the trust of over 115 insurance customers across 25 countries and a 100% focus on the insurance industry, Shift has a proven track record of delivering a positive impact for P&C insurers. Shift’s global presence, along with Guidewire’s investment in Shift’s Series D financing, supports ongoing technological innovation and accelerates go-to-market efforts, enabling continued growth.
Kaiju Worldwide
Kaiju Worldwide, a leader in Predictive AI and machine learning systems for capital markets, has appointed Dr. Aitor Muguruza as the firm’s Chief AI Officer. A PhD alumni of Imperial College, London, Dr. Muguruza has enjoyed a distinguished career in quantitative research, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and finance, and will continue to support Kaiju’s mission to redefine autonomous portfolio management with innovative, self-evolving AI-driven solutions. In his new role, Dr. Muguruza will report directly to Kaiju Worldwide Global Chair and CEO, Ryan Pannell.
Prior to his appointment as Chief AI Officer, Dr. Muguruza held the position of Director of AI and Data Science at Kaiju, having joined the company in early 2020 as the Head of Scientific Research and Data Analytics.
In addition to his roles at Kaiju, Dr. Muguruza has held a position as Visiting Lecturer at Imperial College London since 2019, where he teaches postgraduate students in the MSc in Mathematics and Finance program. Prior to Kaiju, he held a position of Equities Research Quant at Natixis as part of the equities division.
Options Technology
Options Technology, a trailblazer in capital markets infrastructure, today announced the appointment of Noam Siegel as Vice President of Sales.
Noam brings over a decade of experience in sales, with a notable tenure at Interactive Data 7ticks and ICE serving as Manager for Connectivity & Feeds Sales. Prior to his time at ICE, Noam held multiple key positions at Interactive Data 7ticks, including leadership roles for account management, operations, and project management.
In his new role, Noam will lead the firm’s strategic business development initiatives, leveraging his proven track record and deep understanding of market dynamics, particularly in Chicago, to expand Options’ footprint and strengthen its presence and partnerships in the region.
S&P Global
S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) announced today the launch of a new solution in open beta that enables customers to access several high-priority S&P Global datasets for generative AI (GenAI) use cases. Kensho LLM-ready API integrates seamlessly with large language models (LLMs) like GPT, Gemini, or Claude, allowing customers to use natural language to query S&P Global’s tabular datasets. The API will help engineering, product, and business teams across financial services save significant time and resources by making company information, financial statements, historic market data, and global securities data a question away.
Traditionally, incorporating complex financial data into GenAI applications requires financial institutions to conduct arduous, time-consuming, and expensive data preprocessing, integration, and monitoring. As a result, many firms do not have the resources to start or maintain this process, which means they have not been able to fully take advantage of GenAI for their use cases. With the Kensho LLM-ready API, S&P Global has done this work already, so customers can add S&P Global’s rich, tabular data seamlessly and reliably into their LLM-enabled applications. Business users, such as analysts and traders, can write their queries into their institution’s chosen LLM and receive a trusted, timely answer. The solution draws on S&P Global’s financial domain expertise, which includes a sophisticated knowledge of the needs, use cases, and shorthand preferred by financial professionals. To support traceability and give customer confidence in the accuracy of the response, the solution provides the function calls or generated code as an audit trail.
Asking natural language questions of complex structured data has historically been very difficult, due to high complexity of business and finance datasets, including a reliance on tabular data. As a result, without readily consumable data formats, financial institutions that want to harness GenAI are seeing delayed time to value. Kensho LLM-ready API, which has been used by a select group of customers in beta since April 2024, has already helped institutions speed up their GenAI adoption and workflows. The solution provides access to S&P Capital IQ Financials, Compustat® Financials, and Market Data, and partial access to Key Developments and GICRS, with plans to make additional datasets available throughout 2025.
S&P Global
S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) today announced major generative-AI (GenAI) powered enhancements to S&P Capital IQ Pro including the introduction of Document Intelligence, a reimagined document analysis experience for global company filings, earnings call transcripts, investor presentations, news and research. The latest update also includes the launch of ChatIQ, a GenAI-powered assistant developed in partnership with Kensho, S&P Global’s AI innovation hub, to support users with their company, industry and sector research.
The intuitive Document Intelligence solution brings together multiple GenAI innovations in a singular interface. Users benefit from smart search and the ability to interact with documents using GenAI tools and leverage smart summarization. The solution also provides key phrases that highlight relevant and significant topics within earnings call transcripts and natural language processing (NLP)-derived sentiment scores. Users can also ask questions on millions of documents to gain new insights such as those related to financial highlights, strategic initiatives and growth drivers of a company.
ChatIQ leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) and is trained on the vast corpus of S&P Capital IQ Pro tabular and textual data. The solution is specifically tailored to support the needs of banking and buyside analysts. Building upon S&P Capital IQ’s core tenet of click-through to source data, ChatIQ enables company and competitor landscape analysis, industry analysis, market monitoring, financial analysis, strategy research and more, with full traceability provided in answers.
Scienaptic AI
Scienaptic AI, a leader in AI-powered credit underwriting, today announced a strategic partnership with the Kentucky’s Credit Unions (KCU) to bring advanced AI-driven underwriting technology to credit unions across Kentucky, enhancing their capacity to deliver smarter, more inclusive lending.
Since its founding in 1934, the Kentucky’s Credit Unions has served as an advocate and resource hub, advancing the cooperative principles of credit unions throughout the state. KCU supports its member credit unions through education, advocacy, and operational assistance, with a central focus on meeting the financial needs of Kentuckians. Partnering with innovative companies like Scienaptic underscores KCU’s commitment to equipping credit unions with cutting-edge tools that enrich member experiences and strengthen community financial health.
Upstart
UNCLE Credit Union (UNCLE), a Northern California-based credit union with over 38,000 members, has announced a new partnership with Upstart (NASDAQ: UPST), the leading artificial intelligence (AI) lending marketplace, to provide personal loans to new and existing members.
UNCLE Credit Union started lending as a partner on the Upstart Referral Network in July 2024. With the Upstart Referral Network, qualified personal loan applicants on Upstart.com who meet UNCLE Credit Union’s credit policies will receive tailored offers as they seamlessly transition into an UNCLE-branded experience to complete the online member application and closing process.
Vouched
Vouched, the leader in AI-powered identity verification for healthcare, banking, and financial services, today announced the appointment of Neal Oman as Chief Technology Officer and Patrick Williams as Senior Director of Marketing. Following David McGrath’s appointment as VP of Sales earlier this month, the recent addition of these key team members highlights Vouched’s focus on advancing product innovation and accelerating its Go To Market team amid the company’s continuing rapid expansion.
Neal Oman joins Vouched with a deep technical background building and delivering artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications and with 25+ years of experience in public and private technology companies. Prior to Vouched, Neal served as the CTO and Head of Engineering at Plunk, as a senior technical advisor for AI and analytics at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and VP of Research in applied ML and computer vision at HERE Technologies.
As the CTO of Vouched, Neal will be responsible for formulating a technology strategy that aligns with the company’s business objectives and market needs. He will oversee product development and delivery, designing robust, secure, and scalable software architectures that meet the complex needs of Vouched’s B2B clients. He will also lead the company’s efforts to recruit, mentor, and retain skilled engineers and developers.
WealthSmyth
With a groundbreaking approach that fuses AI with a traditionally “low tech” life insurance industry, WealthSmyth has officially announced the arrival of its two-pronged approach to making advanced wealth-building strategies more accessible to the masses: WealthSmyth AI and WealthSmyth Agency.
Pairing an AI platform for independent brokerages (WealthSmyth AI) with an affiliated but independent agency (WealthSmyth Agency) to work as early adopters of the technology, WealthSmyth is connecting innovative technology with real world scenarios to actually help everyday people.
In fact, a June 2024 survey of 200 US insurance executives conducted by the Deloitte Center of Financial Services reported that 76% of respondents said that their organization has already implemented AI in internal functions, customer service, or operations. The data does not show AI usage for client and wealth-building advisory in the way WealthSmyth AI will deliver.
