ABBYY Survey Reveals FOMO Drives AI Adoption for 69% of Banking and Financial Services Providers

*82% of financial services leaders trust AI to benefit their business *93% trust large language models (LLMs)
*Huge increases in investment expected next year

New research from intelligent automation company ABBYY finds that fear of missing out (FOMO) plays a significant role in driving artificial intelligence (AI) investment by banking and financial services providers, with 69% of companies reporting they are worried their organization will be left behind if they don’t use it.

Another key driver for AI spending cited by 64% of respondents is that customers expect it, and 63% expressed a desire to increase efficiency/customer service according to the ABBYY State of Intelligent Automation Report AI Trust Barometer.

In terms of confidence in AI technology, 8 in 10 (82%) of banking IT leaders say they trust AI to benefit their business. The most popular platforms are generative AI tools like chatbots, digital assistants, LLMs and ChatGPT, which are used by 66% of respondents, followed by purpose-built AI tools such as intelligent document processing (IDP) at 56%.

The biggest concerns about using AI in financial services are the cost of implementation and technical complexity (35%), followed by the amount of data required to train them (34%) and potential for misuse by employees (33%). Of those who don’t trust the technology to benefit their business, the top reason was reliability and accuracy of data (50%), cybersecurity and data breaches, AI bias, and safeguarding sensitive data/maintaining data privacy (all 42%).

Despite this, 97% of financial services leaders plan to increase AI budgets next year, with almost a quarter (23%) expecting to raise their budget by between 21-30%.

On the controversial subject of ethical and trustworthy AI, the study showed that an overwhelming 95% of banking and financial services leaders feel their company is following all government regulations on AI, yet only 63% said their organization has policies in place that their security and compliance teams adhere to. More than half (56%) said they’d feel more confident knowing there was a responsible AI policy, while 51% would like software that detects and monitors AI compliance.

Maxime Vermeir, Senior Director of AI Strategy at ABBYY, commented, “It’s interesting to see the financial services sector’s faith in LLMs despite the initial skepticism towards their tendency to hallucinate or provide inaccurate results. This indicates that the market is maturing by incorporating purpose-built tools like IDP into their AI strategy, using them to address specific business needs and enable more trust in LLM-powered solutions.”

Top departments where AI is used in financial services:

• Finance administration (48%)
• Marketing (46%)
• Development & engineering (46%)
• Customer service (44%)
• Sales (40%)
• Operations (38%)
• Procure to pay (31%)
• Accounts payable (28%)

The ABBYY State of Intelligent Automation Report AI Trust Barometer gauged the level of trust and adoption of AI technologies across 1,200 IT decision makers in the UK, US, France, Germany, Australia and Singapore. The study was carried out June 3-12, 2024. Download the full free report for additional details