At the intersection of finance and technology, innovation in consumer banking has reached a fever pitch. Artificial intelligence and machine learning promise cost reductions through automation of customer-facing roles that have traditionally required a human layer, but it’s a divisive subject. Many are concerned that the resulting job loss could deal a heavy blow to the dwindling American middle class. Others insist initial estimates have been blown out of proportion, and that resulting job loss won’t be quite so dramatic. All the while, banking executives are having to confront unprecedented technology challenges while balancing ethical considerations with ROI.
At the center of the arms race are a number of female executives determined to keep things on the rails. Frontline AI experts from Bank of America, BankMobile and Capital One are designing solutions to ensure that advancements in AI remain subject to ethical and legislative scrutiny. In this high-stakes, winner-take-all environment, these mindful professionals are balancing commercial ambition with the need to prevent harmful biases from hamstringing innovation at the ground level. Here’s how they’re doing it.
Cathy Bessant – Bank of America
As chief operations and technology officer at Bank of America, Bessant plays an immense role in determining her company’s approach to AI, and it’s not something she takes lightly. Bessant recently solidified cooperation between BofA and Harvard University’s Belford Center for Science to found the Council on the Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence. The organization, which intends to unite relevant experts from Harvard and MIT, plans to address pressing ethical and legislative questions surrounding the use of Artificial Intelligence in business. BofA has signed on for a three-year funding agreement to get the project off the ground.
As Bessant explains, “The Council will engage a spectrum of thought leaders to address the most pressing moral, legal, and ethical questions surrounding the future application of artificial intelligence. As business, public, and private entities rush to realize the efficiencies and effectiveness of AI, we will examine how these benefits are balanced with the human components of AI to determine how best to reskill the workforce for an AI world.”
Bessant’s strong feelings about the emerging role of AI in modern finance were made clear in a recent interview with Tearsheet, in which she took aim at the oft-quoted startup wisdom of “fail early, fail often.” She explains, “We have a huge responsibility, we happen to love that and think it’s our job to steward it well. The safety and preservation of our customer trust means that lots of failures can not be in the cultural way we think.”
Luvleen Sidhu – BankMobile
A graduate of both Harvard University and the Wharton Business School, Sidhu has a history of exceeding her own goals. She co-founded BankMobile in 2015, offering customers the country’s first no-fee, digital-only banking service. That same year she and her team set out to register the company’s first 25,000 accounts but ended up landing four times that many. Now working as president and chief strategy officer, Sidhu is at the helm of one of the company’s most ambitious undertakings to date.
BankMobile recently announced plans to offer unique online lending services to its customers. The company’s partnerships with more than 800 colleges and universities have allowed it to capture a much younger audience than most banks; a market segment that has gone under patronized by creditors who traditionally target customers who’ve had time to develop a FICO credit score. Sidhu is betting big on partnership with fintech firm Upstart, which uses AI to analyze an applicant’s educational background and employment history during the underwriting process, variables not typically considered by traditional lenders.
Jeff Keltner, head of business development at Upstart, explains how he sees the partnership as an opportunity to empower younger customers. “We look at this as a way to say, if you’re a young person who is just coming out of school and you have no credit file, the fact that you took those steps to higher education is meaningful.” Sidhu points out that it’s a mutually beneficial partnership made possible by the wealth of first party data BankMobile has collected through its post-secondary partnerships. “With that sort of information and partnering with Upstart, which has the algorithms and machine learning to decipher dimensions above and beyond the FICO score, they’re really a good match to be able to penetrate our thin-credit-file, near-prime portfolio of customers.”
Audra Koklys Plummer & Carla Saavedra Kochalski – Capital One
Plummer and Kochalski work together to design, develop and maintain “Eno,” Capital One’s chatbot AI that’s been running since March of 2017. Faced with the challenge of encouraging existing customers to adopt a new and unfamiliar service channel, Plummer is adopting a very human approach to solving the problem. Putting her experience as a digital filmmaker at Dreamworks, Lucasfilm and Pixar to good use, she’s given Eno a backstory and personal preferences that make it more relatable to the average consumer. It’s this level of individuality that Plummer hopes will inform the way Eno interacts with customers, making for a more personable and accessible experience.
Working alongside Plummer is Kochalski, director of conversational AI products. She tackles one of the biggest problem sets currently facing AI developers: language recognition. Typos, verbal accents, and regional dialects mean that AIs are constantly having to hit moving targets when it comes to understanding a customer’s requests, which can leave some consumers feeling left out. But for Kochalski, inclusivity is non-negotiable. Her answer has been to develop faster-acting, more nuanced learning algorithms, capable of solving issues as granular as common mistyped characters. Eno’s latest update includes the ability to offer customers virtual credit cards, intended to boost engagement and prevent fraud
Whether optimizing user experience, expanding to new markets, or advancing the surrounding discourse, female banking executives continue to play an enormous role in determining how AI will shape the evolving consumer banking space. The eventual legacy of AI at-large remains to be seen, but let’s hope these four women continue to steer it in a direction that prioritizes consideration as well as innovation.