Highlights from AWS Financial Services Summit 2024

Luana attended AWS' Financial Services Summit in New York

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently hosted its annual Financial Services Summit in New York, providing valuable insights into the current state of AI within the financial services industry. Luana was invited to the event and we gained some key insights that we'd like to share with you. Here are some highlights and takeaways from the summit:

Event Highlights

Scott Mullins, AWS, kicked off the day with the motto “Rethink Intelligence”, discussing AWS AI innovations and customer use cases of AI.

Michael Kearns, AWS, moderated a panel on AI. Michael Gerstenhaber of Anthropic shared how Anthropic develops LLMs safely with guardrails. He also discussed Anthropic’s goal to reduce prompt engineering and make Claude LLM more easily available to customers. Johnna Powell shared that he Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) uses AI with humans in the loop. The panel agreed that low-quality training data can lead to heavy prompt engineering.

Tony Shio of Nasdaq presented M-ELO, the AI/ML model that NASDAQ uses for order filling, and shared lessons learned from the SEC approval process. He also discussed NASDAQ’s use case of Generative AI for fraud detection and insider trading, which led to a 33% time-saving for investigation evidence collection.

During breaks, Bank, FinTech, and Insurance executives discussed Generative AI use cases, buy vs. build strategies, and compared progress. All attendees acknowledged that we are still early in the Generative AI journey, with only a few companies, like NASDAQ, implementing it in core business processes.

Key take-aways

The three takeaways from the event were:

1. Opportunity: Many banks and fintechs are seeking innovative AI use cases, indicating a growing interest in leveraging AI to improve their operations.
2. Hype: Some company presentations resembled early RPA implementations with related challenges, emphasizing the need for caution and careful planning when adopting AI solutions.
3. Risk: Complexities and challenges were evident, particularly in fine-tuning large language models in-house and running them in production.

Reflection and next steps

The AWS Financial Services Summit provided valuable insights into the state of tech in financial services and sparked meaningful conversations among attendees. As AI continues to evolve, it's essential for industry leaders to stay informed and collaborate on best practices to leverage AI effectively and responsibly.

Feel free to reach out to chat more about the future of AI in finance and how we can navigate the opportunities and challenges ahead.

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