AI's more of a help to card issuance than a job threat

Artificial intelligence is disrupting how every industry is doing business, and the financial services industry is no exception.

In fact, recent disruption has led 81 percent of banking CEOs to express concern about the speed of technological change, and some have started to wonder how financial advisors powered by AI will affect job stability in the industry.

But what if AI was actually embraced by the financial services and payments industries instead of feared? Not only can finance professionals use AI to automate much of their manual work, but AI is also highly effective in accomplishing mission-critical tasks such as fraud detection and prevention, next-best-action recommendation, and automated investing.

One of the first natural applications for AI in any industry is to automate much of the manual work that is done within existing processes, and the financial services industry has plenty of opportunities for this. Let's use credit card applications as an example.

After a potential customer submits his or her application, the bank enters the information into its systems, reviews and verifies it with both internal and external data, then calculates a risk score for the applicant to help assess the applicant's risk level. Today, almost all of these verification processes—which can be lengthy and repetitive—are done by humans, who are also unfortunately fairly prone to making errors and are easily influenced by bias.

Relying on AI for each of these steps can dramatically cut down the time it takes to approve an application and onboard a customer, all without any adverse effects for the financial professionals working behind the scenes. If you accelerate this process, your customers will have a better onboarding experience and higher satisfaction.