Why Machines Cannot Replace Bankers?

Artificial Intelligence has become one of the hottest topics and trends in recent years. While AI has given businesses a lot of new ideas and opportunities, it has also given workers a lot of worries about losing their jobs to the rise of automation and AI. Despite these widespread concerns and predictions that humans will be replaced by AI, Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, the former World Bank’s chief economist, dismissed these beliefs in an interview with Bloomberg.

“This fear that robots have eliminated jobs – this fear is not supported by the evidence so far,”

Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, former World Bank’s chief economist

PwC has predicted a 3% risk of job losses in the early 2020s, rising to 30% by the mid-2030s. From this prediction, it reflects that job loss from automation is not going to be defined from a single significant change. Instead, it is likely to be a series of constant, iterative refinements; as technology improves, automation will steadily become a bigger part of our lives.

Human-AI Relationship In The Finance Industry

In the finance industry, AI will not replace bankers anytime soon, since we haven't reached a stage in the AI space where machines can run the money minting business. However, AI and automation technology will improve the process of human decision and service. Many banking procedures will start seeing changes, one example is that Goldman Sachs has already mapped 146 distinct steps taken in IPOs offering stock and most of them are begging to be automated.

Robots are set to slowly replace traditional assembly line workers, who have very standardized and repetitive tasks. However, when it comes to varied and unique situations, humans are still needed. Moreover, the rise of AI and robots will make humans’ skills more valuable than ever. Since these computing systems are getting more complexed, in order to monitor, manage and interpret these data, it will require more humans who have the expertise, problem solving skills, judgement and creativity to execute these roles.

Humans should not be undermined; machines will not perform efficiently without humans. Ultimately, machines are there to compliment humans, allowing humans to be more efficient. There have been many new and promising IT projects that failed; however, in most cases it was not because of technological shortcomings. Instead, it is the result of human users not being able to adapt to unfamiliar interfaces, additional data-entry work, disruptions to routines and frustrations to learn and understand the new system. No matter how beneficial this new technology will be for the users and companies, humans still tend to reject it.

What is The First Step Of AI Automation in banks?

The first step to bring the banking industry closer to automation will be teaching machines to read bank documents. Most of the banking documents are unstructured data: KYC documents, Relationship Manager Client Report, Fund Offer Letter, Address Proof, Investment Memorandum, Land Tender. The middle offices spend a significant amount of time extracting key information from these documents, and manually inputting them into their internal systems.

Traditional robotic process automation (RPA) solution cannot handle these unstructured data competently. It relies on building template to check the layout of the documents, and often requires heavy work when there is a change in the document format.

With SuperAcc’s Quantract function, it can adapt to documents with different layouts. SuperAcc automatically analyzes unstructured data such as personal information, loan offering information, property information, and corporate information through machine vision technology and natural language processing technology. This allows middle office to extract the quantitative element from the paragraphs automatically, resulting in an increased in efficiency, a more scalable process and a reduced workload during bank’s expansion or peak season. Moreover, SuperAcc speeds up the onboarding time for customer, resulting in increased customer satisfaction, also allowing banks to start business transaction with clients much earlier.

In conclusion, machines cannot fully replace humans, at least not in the near future; they are merely tools to help humans to become more efficient. When humans learn to work alongside with machines, utilizing them to its full extend, it will revolutionize businesses, giving businesses an edge against competitors who lag behind.