Artificial Intelligence (AI) has found its way into most businesses and industries, including asset management. Analysts are using it to work through earnings calls and filings, portfolio teams to test scenarios, and operations teams to help draft client reports. 

Adoption is rising, too. Seven in ten large buy-side firms now use AI in their front offices, up from around one in ten the previous year, while 55% of asset managers have integrated AI into at least one investment process.

Communications around these have moved nearly as fast. More companies in financial services are eager to speak about AI and how they are using it. As adoption grows, telling that story clearly and credibly is becoming really important. 

91% of asset managers plan to increase their use of AI over the next year. That’s why one area deserves more attention: the data underneath AI-augmented work. AI works with the information it is given, and for many asset managers that information sits across several systems, often built at different times and for different purposes. 

When that’s the case, it becomes difficult to trace how an output was reached, and an output you can’t trace is one you can’t confidently explain to a client, a regulator or a reporter.

These audiences are getting sharper. Clients want to understand how decisions about their money are made, and regulators expect firms to be able to explain them. 

In our work with firms across digital assets and financial services, firms that can explain clearly and consistently how they use AI, and where people stay involved in decisions, tend to build stronger trust with clients, regulators and the media. It also helps them avoid overstating what the technology does, something allocators are increasingly paying attention to as AI claims become more common.

Our CEO, Otto Jacobsson, will be following these conversations at the Global WealthTech Summit in London on 3 November. If you’re working through how to talk about AI, data or digital assets with clients, regulators or the media, we’d be glad to meet at the event; drop Otto an email at [email protected]. Grab your tickets, and see you there!