Intelligent Fin.tech Issue 35 | Page 35

As AI becomes more deeply embedded in financial services, Marc Fernandez, Chief Strategy Officer, Neurologyca, says the growing divide between machine-driven decisions and unpredictable human behaviour could create a new challenge for banks, regulators and customers.

hen US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair

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Jerome Powell reportedly gathered some of the country’ s largest bank CEOs behind closed doors to discuss the risks posed by advanced AI systems, it was something of a turning point.

The finance sector has been among the most prolific when it comes to AI adoption, but models are advancing so quickly that the risks they may pose – or eventually pose – largely took a back seat.

Much of their discussion centred on cybersecurity, particularly the emergence of models capable of identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities at a scale and speed that would have seemed unthinkable only a few years ago. I think that concern is entirely justified. Financial institutions are already dealing with AI-generated phishing campaigns, increasingly sophisticated fraud and attack surfaces that are becoming harder to monitor as automation spreads across the industry.

But the more consequential risk may have less to do with AI attacking the financial system and more to do with the financial system slowly drifting out of sync with the people it’ s meant to serve.

Banking infrastructure has always been built around assumptions about how people make decisions. Credit scoring, fraud detection, underwriting, trading systems, even customer onboarding flows all rely on behavioural patterns remaining relatively stable and interpretable.

What’ s interesting about AI is that it’ s completely changing the pace and nature of those interactions. Systems are now capable of acting autonomously, processing enormous volumes of information and moving decisions forward continuously, www. intelligentfin. tech

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