Empower the banking employee experience with generative AI

It’s true that banking organizations are facing unprecedented challenges in the face of changing business models, regulatory compliance requirements, and competitive pressures from fintechs and non-traditional financial firms. However, banking leaders are excited about the potential of generative AI to help meet these challenges.

Helping banks improve productivity through better teamwork, insights, and communications is a key focus area for Microsoft, and something Azure OpenAI Service and our rapidly evolving copilot offerings are well positioned to enable. Additionally, Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services provides a strong industry-specific platform and data model built for greater industry relevancy. Many of our banking customers are energized by these products and are exploring use cases and other innovations.

Paying down the digital debt for banking employees

Banking employees continue to get bombarded with data, applications, messaging, devices, and communications channels. We call this gap between the volume of data and the ability to process it the digital debt. Every minute spent paying this debt down is a minute not spent on more productive or creative work.

This is where banking leaders and employees are interested in generative AI—specifically, its promise of dramatically improving the employee experience by automating mundane tasks, summarizing and comparing data sets, recommending key actions, and providing real-time insights.

The goal of copilot is to empower everyone to achieve more and to assist humans in being more productive and creative in their roles. And the proof is already being realized: In a recent Work Trend Special Report, 70% of Microsoft Copilot users reported being more productive, 29% were faster with searching, writing, and summarizing, and 68% said it improved the quality of their work.

These benefits are now readily available to banks, thanks to Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot for Microsoft 365, Copilot for Dynamics 365, and other Microsoft Copilot capabilities that make it easy to build new generative AI solutions for high-value use cases.

Improving the employee experience from the front line to the back office

Generative AI promises to advance productivity in banking and financial service firms by integrating powerful insights into daily tasks, summarizing documents and meetings, digesting and distilling content from myriad sources, and creating new, high-quality reports, presentations, images, and much more. The implications span every level of the business, and the innovation will ultimately impact every employee.

Let’s take a look at how workers in three different levels of a bank can be more productive though traditional productivity applications combined with generative AI.

The relationship manager: Delivering customer satisfaction to drive revenue

The relationship manager is often the face of the bank to the customer. This role drives revenue and wallet share for the bank by building trusted relationships and providing superior insights and relevant products to the customer. Relationship managers can use Copilot for Microsoft 365 to automate administrative tasks, instantly draft emails to customers, and even suggest customized replies to customer inquiries or requests for proposals. Copilots can also help prioritize daily follow-up actions, streamline preparations for customer meetings, or recap action items post-meeting. Relationship managers can also use Microsoft Copilot for Sales to improve sales productivity by pulling in key account details from customer relationship management (CRM) systems or instantly generating product comparisons, and instantly drafting new proposals.

The wealth manager: Making superior financial recommendations

Wealth managers and investment bankers need market insights that lead to better financial decisions for clients. This requires optimal access to data—from knowing the client to keeping abreast of market changes—and strong customer engagement.

Wealth managers can use copilots in Outlook and PowerPoint to communicate more effectively. Microsoft Fabric and Copilot for Power BI can instantly pull together multiple data sources, do complex financial analysis, identify key trends and patterns, and then optimize client portfolios. Copilot in Outlook can triage, identify, and summarize the most important messages, then instantly create client replies based on existing email threads and key points. Copilot in PowerPoint can be used to rapidly create new slides from existing sources, add speaker notes based on existing slides, or instantly create a visual rendering of a concept or idea.

The compliance officer: Protecting the bank by minimizing risk

The compliance officer needs to ensure security, privacy, and control of customer and financial data. Communication and collaboration are key, as the role touches critical functions across the bank, and reporting to management is a major responsibility.

Compliance officers are becoming more productive with copilots in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams that speed a wide range of writing and reporting tasks, augmented with tools such as data loss prevention and rights management. Compliance officers can use Copilot in Microsoft Teams to avoid meeting conflicts for diverse cross-group virtual teams, and recap key action items for people who can’t attend meetings. Compliance officers can use copilots to summarize comments from coworkers, list outstanding actions, and even include missing citations. They can use copilots to instantly create an executive summary at the top of a new document or generate an internal FAQ based on the Word document. And, when needed, they can use Microsoft Purview eDiscovery to make the content more discoverable across communications (email and video) and documents.

Empowering the banking industry to achieve more

Many banks regard the advent of generative AI with a mix of excitement and trepidation, which is only to be expected with such seminal new technology. We and our highly capable partners help banks begin their generative AI journeys by identifying discernable use cases that can be developed, then working iteratively to discover what works best. Typically, this includes the contributions of Microsoft partners from across our global ecosystem, who are experts in Microsoft technology and generative AI, and who can help identify strong use cases and determine the best path forward for implementing solutions that meet their needs.

Together with our partners, Microsoft is dedicated to helping banks take full advantage of generative AI by partnering for the long term. Trust, security, and compliance are the cornerstones of our value proposition to banking customers and we are committed to the advancement of responsible AI, driven by ethical principles.

To learn more about how banks and financial services firms can unlock business value, deepen customer relationships, and manage risk with AI and the Microsoft Cloud, read the “Empowering Your Banking Employees to Thrive” e-book, visit the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services website, or get in touch with your Microsoft sales representative or Microsoft partner.

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Source: Microsoft Industry Blog