Latest / Chief in Tech Deep Dive Shortcast / Chief in Tech S1E19 - Neha Singh, Jeannette Martin, Laura Mosley and Vandana Khanna: Automating Asset Management - Finding Efficiency with Artificial Intelligence
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to this deep dive. We are really glad
- 0:03you're here with us today. Yeah, definitely great
- 0:05to have you listening If you are looking to just
- 0:08bypass all that dense corporate jargon and get
- 0:11straight to the actual mechanics of where technology
- 0:14is taking high stakes finance, you are in the
- 0:17exact right place. It is a totally fascinating
- 0:19landscape to explore right now. I mean, we are
- 0:21moving way past the theoretical stuff. Right.
- 0:24And we're looking at the actual plumbing of how
- 0:26these major institutions operate on a daily basis.
- 0:29Exactly. So our mission today is to explore how
- 0:31artificial intelligence is just completely rewiring
- 0:35set management. Down to the studs. Down to the
- 0:37studs. We're pulling insights from a really comprehensive
- 0:40panel discussion today. It features digital finance
- 0:43and security leaders from MetLife, Capgemini
- 0:46Invent, PNC Bank, and PGM Global Services. Heavy
- 0:50hitters. Yeah, very. And the sheer scale of what
- 0:53they are discussing is honestly, it's staggering.
- 0:55We are not talking about using a chat bot to
- 0:58summarize an article for you. No. We are looking
- 1:00at a fundamental shift in how trillions of dollars
- 1:03in global wealth are managed, secured, and optimized.
- 1:06And that scale, honestly, that is precisely why
- 1:09this matters to you, even if you don't manage
- 1:12a massive institutional portfolio. Right. Even
- 1:14if you're just interested in how enterprise tech
- 1:17is evolving. Exactly. What we are really examining
- 1:20today is the ultimate modern tightrope walk for
- 1:24these massive firms. They're trying to achieve
- 1:27this this hyper -efficiency through AI. Which
- 1:31everyone wants. Which everyone wants, but while
- 1:33maintaining the absolute non -negotiable necessity
- 1:36of security. Yeah. One of the panelists from
- 1:38PNC Bank framed this perfectly, I think. They
- 1:40said the guiding principle for their AI adoption
- 1:43is to have foresight, not fear. Foresight, not
- 1:46fear. I love that. I think that's a great anchor
- 1:48for our discussion, especially when it is just
- 1:50so easy to either panic about security or get
- 1:53completely swept away by the vendor hype. Oh,
- 1:55the hype is everywhere. It is. OK. Let's unpack
- 1:57this, starting with the actual productivity leap
- 2:01we are seeing on the ground. The panel sources
- 2:04cited that generative AI is currently being used
- 2:07to reduce manual processes by as much as 80%.
- 2:1180%. Yeah, and now, I have to admit, whenever
- 2:14I hear a perfectly round number like 80%, I get
- 2:17a little skeptical. Sure. It sounds like marketing
- 2:19math. What does that actually look like in the
- 2:22trenches? That's a healthy skepticism to have.
- 2:24But when you look at the specific use cases they
- 2:26highlighted, that number starts to make a lot
- 2:29of sense. OK. Take the traditional KYC process,
- 2:32for example. Know your customer. Right. We all
- 2:35know how notoriously bottlenecked that can get.
- 2:39Historically, you have analysts just bogged down
- 2:41in the mechanics of verification. Pulling disparate
- 2:43records. Right. Cross -referencing complex corporate
- 2:46hierarchies. and digging through massive unstructured
- 2:49PDF documents? just to validate an entity. Oh,
- 2:53the dreaded unstructured PDF. Anyone who has
- 2:56ever had to manually pull specific data points
- 2:59out of a messy 200 -page legal document and put
- 3:02it into a spreadsheet knows the sheer physical
- 3:05eye strain involved. You're just living with
- 3:08dual monitors, using keyboard shortcuts, and
- 3:11praying you didn't misread a decimal point. Exactly.
- 3:14And what the AI is doing is sweeping that mechanical
- 3:17friction away. It effortlessly parses those unstructured
- 3:20documents, pulls the relevant entities out, and
- 3:23formats the data for the human analysts to review.
- 3:26Wow. But here is the critical pivot in the technology.
- 3:30We are evolving from simple AI into what the
- 3:34industry is calling agentic AI. Agentic AI. Okay,
- 3:37that feels like a massive turning point. Break
- 3:39down agentic AI for us because that is a term
- 3:41a lot of people are hearing but might not fully
- 3:43grasp in a corporate context. Sure. Up until
- 3:45recently, enterprise AI has mostly been a prompt
- 3:48and response tool. You ask a system a question,
- 3:51it generates text or code in return. Like a really
- 3:53smart search engine. Exactly. Agentic AI is fundamentally
- 3:58different. It acts as a proactive assistant that
- 4:01has actually granted permission to manage end
- 4:05-to -end processes across different software
- 4:07platforms. Oh, wow. Yeah. It isn't just waiting
- 4:10for a prompt. It is anticipating the next logical
- 4:13step. making API calls, and queuing up actions
- 4:17for a human to approve. So it shifts the user's
- 4:19role from being a fast data gatherer into an
- 4:22actual strategic decision maker. Spot on. That
- 4:25makes a lot of sense. To make this tangible for
- 4:27you, the listener, let's look at a case study
- 4:29the Capgemini panelists shared. They applied
- 4:31this to the client contact center. A great example.
- 4:34Yeah. And instead of a generic retail banking
- 4:36example, let's put this in the context of high
- 4:39stakes asset management. Imagine you are an institutional
- 4:42investor, the market has just taken a massive
- 4:44unexpected dip, and you are calling your asset
- 4:47manager to figure out your exposure. Right. And
- 4:50in a high stress scenario like that, the last
- 4:52thing the client wants is to navigate an automated
- 4:55phone tree. Press one for panic. Exactly. Or
- 4:57sit on hold while an agent frantically tries
- 4:59to pull up their specific portfolio. Right. So
- 5:02with agentic AI, the system actually listens
- 5:05to the voice of the caller. It recognizes the
- 5:08client. analyzes the urgency in their voice or
- 5:11the keywords they are using, and instantly routes
- 5:14them to the appropriate senior desk. Seamlessly.
- 5:16Seamlessly. But it's what happens on the agent's
- 5:19side that is truly impressive. Before the human
- 5:22agent even answers the line, The agentic AI has
- 5:26generated a comprehensive pre -call dashboard.
- 5:29It connects all the dots before the conversation
- 5:31even begins. Exactly. The agent instantly sees
- 5:34the client's total exposure to the current market
- 5:36volatility, their recent trade history, and even
- 5:39automated suggestions for mitigation strategies
- 5:42based on the firm's current macroeconomic stance.
- 5:45That's huge. The AI has already done the 20 minutes
- 5:48of frantic background research and the two seconds
- 5:50the phone was ringing. And we shouldn't overlook
- 5:52what happens after the client hangs up either.
- 5:54Right. The agentic AI performs automated proactive
- 5:57post call follow ups. It drafts the summary of
- 5:59the agreed upon actions. It queues up the necessary
- 6:02trade tickets for the agent to approve and address
- 6:04an email to the client outlining the next steps.
- 6:07It's just a seamless end to end orchestration.
- 6:10Completely. That automated follow up is incredible
- 6:13for the client experience. But I'm actually more
- 6:16interested in what this means for the person
- 6:18sitting on the other side of the desk. How is
- 6:21this changing the internal worker's day -to -day
- 6:24reality? That's the real question. Because the
- 6:26goal here shouldn't just be replacing people.
- 6:29It should be giving them better tools. And one
- 6:31of those tools the panel discussed is the ability
- 6:34to essentially chat with your own proprietary
- 6:36data. That capability alone. represents a massive
- 6:40paradigm shift in corporate environments. Think
- 6:43about the traditional latency involved in getting
- 6:46an answer to a complex business question. It
- 6:48takes forever. Right. If a portfolio manager
- 6:51needed to understand a subtle trend buried in
- 6:54three years of transaction data, they couldn't
- 6:57just find that themselves. They'd have to submit
- 6:59a JIRA ticket to a data engineering team. Oh,
- 7:02yeah. Wait a week? and hope the SQL query the
- 7:05engineer wrote actually captured the nuance of
- 7:07the original request. And half the time it doesn't,
- 7:10and you have to start the process all over again.
- 7:12But now, that same portfolio manager can use
- 7:14natural language to directly ask their data a
- 7:17question. Under the hood, the AI translates that
- 7:21plain English into a complex query, runs it against
- 7:24the database, and instantly generates a custom
- 7:26bashboard on the fly. You are completely removing
- 7:29the latency between having a question and getting
- 7:32an actionable insight. Yeah. And we are seeing
- 7:35this acceleration outside of the data science
- 7:37realm too. The panel brought up a great example
- 7:40regarding sales teams and wholesalers out in
- 7:42the field. Yes, the wholesaler example was brilliant.
- 7:44If you've ever worked in that side of the industry,
- 7:47you know the pain of competitor research. It's
- 7:49brutal. You're traveling, meeting with institutional
- 7:52clients, and you have to be prepared to explain
- 7:54exactly why your firm's product is better than
- 7:57a rival's. Historically, that meant digging through
- 8:00hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages of incredibly
- 8:03dense compa - I always joke that this specific
- 8:06kind of tedious manual research used to be a
- 8:09rite of passage for junior analysts, fueled entirely
- 8:12by bad office coffee and sheer willpower. It
- 8:15is incredibly grueling work. You are looking
- 8:18for very specific details, subtle differences
- 8:21in risk profiles, fee structures, or investment
- 8:25restrictions, all buried deep within legal text.
- 8:28But armed with this new AI, those teams in the
- 8:31field can just query the system directly from
- 8:33their phone or tablet. They can ask a highly
- 8:36specific complex question about a competitor's
- 8:39newly updated policy, and the AI synthesizes
- 8:42the answer for them right there, in real time,
- 8:45citing the exact page of the prospectus it pulled
- 8:48from. It gives them the answer when they actually
- 8:50need it, right before they walk into the client
- 8:52meeting. And it isn't just data retrieval, it
- 8:54is also content creation. The panelists from
- 8:58PGM Global Services shared how their marketing
- 9:00and comms teams are utilizing this. They're taking
- 9:03their past thought leadership materials, white
- 9:05papers, event copy, and feeding it into an AI
- 9:08so the model learns their highly specific proprietary
- 9:11brand voice. They mentioned it took their standard
- 9:13campaign creation time from 14 days down to six
- 9:16days. Which is a massive jump in efficiency.
- 9:18Massive. But my immediate question when I read
- 9:21that was, does it actually capture the nuance
- 9:23of a premier financial firm, or does it sound
- 9:26like a generic robot wrote it? That is the crucial
- 9:29distinction. Because they are training it specifically
- 9:33on their own curated historical data, the output
- 9:37isn't generic. It incorporates their specific
- 9:40terminology, their required compliance disclaimers,
- 9:43and their house style. OK. The human editors
- 9:46are then spending their time refining a highly
- 9:49competent first draft rather than staring at
- 9:52a blank page. What's fascinating here is how
- 9:54this completely reframes the mainstream narrative
- 9:56we often hear about AI coming to eliminate everyone's
- 10:00jobs. When you look at these enterprise use cases,
- 10:02it isn't about human replacement. It is about
- 10:04human augmentation. It removed the absolute drudgery
- 10:08of the day -to -day workflow. It allows people
- 10:10to actually perform the strategic, creative,
- 10:13and interpersonal relationship building they
- 10:14were originally hired to do. But of course, to
- 10:17do any of this effectively, whether we're talking
- 10:19about call center dashboards, querying databases,
- 10:21or generating thought leadership, we have to
- 10:23talk about the underlying engine. And that is
- 10:26the data itself. There is a very old, very true
- 10:29saying in computer science, garbage in, garbage
- 10:31out. Always true. And when you are dealing with
- 10:34high stakes finance, you absolutely cannot afford
- 10:36for your AI to be making decisions based on unverified,
- 10:41noisy public information. It is the single biggest
- 10:44risk factor in enterprise AI adoption. An AI
- 10:47model is only as accurate and unbiased as the
- 10:50data it is trained on. This is why the panelists
- 10:52from PGM heavily emphasize a strategy they call
- 10:56the walled garden approach. I love that term
- 10:58walled garden. Explain the mechanics of that
- 11:01for us because it sounds like they are basically
- 11:02fencing the AI off from the rest of the world.
- 11:04That is essentially what it is. Instead of allowing
- 11:07their AI to roam free across the open Internet,
- 11:10which is terrifying, which is filled with unverified
- 11:13claims, outdated regulations and inherent biases.
- 11:16Instead of that, these firms deploy their LLMs
- 11:19within a strict internal perimeter. The AI is
- 11:21grounded only in curated proprietary data sets.
- 11:25It only reads the firm's vetted internal knowledge
- 11:27bases, their secure data lakes, and their approved
- 11:29policy documents. So it doesn't know what people
- 11:32are saying on Reddit. It only knows what the
- 11:35firm's chief investment officer has officially
- 11:38published. Precisely. And establishing that Waldgarten
- 11:40matters immensely. First and foremost, it drastically
- 11:44reduces the risk of AI hallucinations. If the
- 11:48model doesn't know the answer, It is constrained
- 11:50to say, I don't know, rather than confidently
- 11:53inventing a false statistic. Which we've all
- 11:56seen happen. Exactly. Furthermore, this walled
- 11:59garden creates a secure sandbox for the employees.
- 12:02It gives them a protected environment to experiment,
- 12:05to learn how to properly prompt the system and
- 12:07to build their digital literacy without any risk
- 12:10of accidentally leaking sensitive internal data
- 12:12to a public model. But setting up that walled
- 12:15garden isn't just a matter of buying a software
- 12:17license. No. The panel really stressed that this
- 12:20requires a massive culture shift. There has to
- 12:23be an incredibly tight ongoing partnership between
- 12:25the business teams and the technology teams.
- 12:28If tech operates in a silo, you run into that
- 12:31classic pitfall where engineers build a highly
- 12:33sophisticated, shiny new tool, they hand it over
- 12:36to the portfolio managers, and no one uses it
- 12:39because it doesn't actually solve a real business
- 12:41problem. We see that happen constantly. The technology
- 12:44must be driven by actual business use cases,
- 12:48not just the desire to deploy AI for the sake
- 12:51of deploying AI. And that requires comprehensive
- 12:54enterprise -wide training from the executive
- 12:57board all the way down to the junior analysts.
- 13:00Everyone needs a baseline understanding of how
- 13:03these generative models function, how to evaluate
- 13:05their outputs, and most importantly, what their
- 13:08limitations are. Which brings us to perhaps the
- 13:10most critical part of this entire deep dive,
- 13:13the security aspect. Here we go. Because everyone
- 13:15in this industry is moving fast. The security
- 13:17leader from TNC Bank used a really memorable
- 13:19analogy for this. They said that in the current
- 13:22market, everyone wants to drive a fast car. Everyone
- 13:24wants to adopt AI quickly to stay competitive.
- 13:27But to drive a fast car safely, you need really,
- 13:30really good brakes. The guardrails have to be
- 13:32established before you step on the gas. Here's
- 13:34where it gets really interesting. Because the
- 13:37consequences of driving this fast car without
- 13:39breaks are not theoretical, they are already
- 13:41playing out. The sources detailed some severe
- 13:45incidents from 2024, where companies, suffering
- 13:48from a fear of missing out, allowed employees
- 13:50to use publicly accessible Gen. AI chatbots for
- 13:53financial analysis without implementing proper
- 13:56data loss prevention controls. It is a nightmare
- 13:58scenario for any chief information security officer.
- 14:01It truly is. You had well -meaning employees
- 14:04taking sensitive client portfolios, including
- 14:06massive amounts of personally identifiable information,
- 14:09and pasting that raw data directly into public
- 14:12chatbots just to format a report. Just trying
- 14:15to save time. Yeah. They didn't realize that
- 14:17by doing so, they were feeding their clients
- 14:19private data into the public models training
- 14:21set. The result was massive data exposures and
- 14:25millions of dollars in regulatory fines, all
- 14:27because they bypassed basic internal guardrails.
- 14:30And accidental data leakage is only one side
- 14:32of the coin. The threat landscape has fundamentally
- 14:35changed because malicious actors are also weaponizing
- 14:37this technology. Oh, the panel did not hold back
- 14:39on this. They highlighted the terrifying reality
- 14:42of AI generated phishing and social engineering.
- 14:45We are no longer talking about poorly worded
- 14:47scam emails full of typos. Right. Attackers are
- 14:51using AI to generate hyper realistic deep fakes
- 14:54of executives. They will clone a CFO's voice
- 14:57and call a junior employee to authorize an urgent
- 14:59wire transfer. Or they will execute incredibly
- 15:02sophisticated business email compromises that
- 15:05perfectly mimic the writing style of internal
- 15:07leadership. This is what we refer to as the cybersecurity
- 15:10arms race. The adversaries are using AI to scale
- 15:13their attacks, automate their vulnerability scanning,
- 15:16and generate highly convincing synthetic media.
- 15:19So you have to fight fire with fire. Exactly.
- 15:22The defending teams have absolutely no choice
- 15:24but to utilize AI as well. A security operations
- 15:27center at a major asset manager simply cannot
- 15:29rely on human analysts to manually sift through
- 15:32millions of daily network logs anymore. So how
- 15:35are the defenders utilizing AI to actually fight
- 15:37back and gain the upper hand? They're using specialized
- 15:40internal AI models to process those unimaginable
- 15:45volumes of event data at machine speed. The AI
- 15:48establishes a baseline of normal network behavior
- 15:50and then constantly hunts for anomalies. Like
- 15:53finding a needle in a haystack? Faster than any
- 15:55human could. Yeah. It helps defenders spot the
- 15:58unknown unknowns, the subtle complex attack patterns
- 16:01that a human analyst would never catch in time.
- 16:03But the panel also offered a stark reminder.
- 16:06AI models are, at their core, just software.
- 16:09Right. And like any software, they have vulnerabilities.
- 16:12The security leaders emphasized that firms must
- 16:14continuously stress test these models using established
- 16:17cybersecurity frameworks. They specifically mentioned
- 16:19leveraging resources like OWAS, which is essentially
- 16:22the global standard for application security,
- 16:24and OpenAI primers to rigorously hunt for flaws
- 16:27in their own walled gardens. It sounds like a
- 16:30relentless high stakes battle. But what I found
- 16:32really encouraging in the sources is that AI
- 16:34isn't just being used to fight off global hackers.
- 16:37It is also being aimed at solving one of the
- 16:38most massive, tedious pain points in the corporate
- 16:41world. I am talking about compliance. Ugh, yes.
- 16:45The labyrinth of modern financial regulation.
- 16:47The panel called this the dream of killing the
- 16:49questionnaire. If you operate anywhere in asset
- 16:52management, you know the absolute agony of conflicting
- 16:54regulations. You have state privacy laws colliding
- 16:58with federal financial regulations, which then
- 17:00collide with various industry certifying authorities.
- 17:03And it never ends. It doesn't. And typically,
- 17:06a firm handles this by deploying armies of compliance
- 17:09analysts to do what they call stare and compare
- 17:11work. They sit there. manually cross -referencing
- 17:15hundreds of spreadsheet cells, trying to figure
- 17:18out how to satisfy a 50 -page vendor risk assessment.
- 17:21It is a massive drain on resources and it is
- 17:24highly prone to human error. But the experts
- 17:26on our panel detailed how agentic AI is actively
- 17:29being used to harmonize these conflicting frameworks.
- 17:33The AI can ingest a massive new federal regulation,
- 17:36cross -reference it against the firm's existing
- 17:38internal controls, and instantly highlight the
- 17:41gaps. It maps the requirements across different
- 17:44jurisdictions to create a single rationalized
- 17:46set of controls. The ultimate goal these firms
- 17:50are driving toward is automating compliance detection
- 17:52entirely. They want the AI to continuously monitor
- 17:56the firm's systems and output the required reporting
- 17:58automatically, effectively cutting out the middleman
- 18:01and killing the endless compliance questionnaires
- 18:04once and for all. That would change the industry
- 18:06overnight. So what does this all mean? We have
- 18:09covered incredible ground today. Looking at everything
- 18:12these leaders from MetLife, Capgemini, PNC, and
- 18:15PGM have laid out, it is abundantly clear that
- 18:18AI in asset management is no longer an experimental
- 18:22toy. Not at all. It is a top to bottom restructuring
- 18:25of the financial plumbing. We are looking at
- 18:27a future powered by agentic assistance capable
- 18:30of eradicating the bulk of manual friction. But
- 18:33it is a future that completely hinges on pristine
- 18:36data governance through walled gardens and ironclad,
- 18:39thoroughly tested security guardrails. If we
- 18:41step back and view this in a broader historical
- 18:44context, we are squarely in the middle of the
- 18:46Fourth Industrial Revolution. And what this deep
- 18:49dive truly underscores is the pivot in the value
- 18:52of human capital. For decades, the financial
- 18:55industry rewarded the manual gathering, sorting,
- 18:57and verifying of data. Right. That era is ending.
- 19:01The true value of the human worker is moving
- 19:03entirely toward interpreting the profound, synthesized
- 19:06insights that these machines deliver. The machine
- 19:10does the heavy lifting of data aggregation, while
- 19:13the human provides the strategic judgment and
- 19:15the ethical oversight. It's a total shift in
- 19:17skill sets. It is. But as we look ahead, this
- 19:20raises a profound question. Something I want
- 19:23you, the listener, to consider long after this
- 19:26deep dive ends. Let's fast forward five or ten
- 19:28years. If agentic AI successfully automates the
- 19:31vast majority of manual analysis, if it flawlessly
- 19:34harmonizes global compliance, and if it seamlessly
- 19:37manages our client interactions, how will firms
- 19:39actually differentiate themselves in the marketplace?
- 19:41That's a great point. When every single competitor
- 19:44has purchased the exact same hyper -efficient
- 19:46AI capabilities, technological speed is no longer
- 19:49an advantage. It is just the baseline. In a fully
- 19:53automated, flawlessly efficient financial world,
- 19:56will deeply held human intuition, empathy, and
- 19:59the art of creative relationship building become
- 20:01the ultimate scarce premium asset? That is the
- 20:04ultimate question we are all going to have to
- 20:06answer in the next few years. Thank you so much
- 20:08for joining us on this deep dive. We hope this
- 20:10exploration helped you cut through the hype and
- 20:12grab hold of the real mechanics shaping the future
- 20:14of finance. Keep learning, keep questioning the
- 20:17information landscape around you, and we will
- 20:19catch you on the next one.