Harnessing AI for Effective Risk Management—Why Financial Institutions Need a Robust AI Infrastructure

Risk can be quantified; uncertainty cannot. Financial institutions deal with uncertainty by turning it into risk and quantifying and managing that risk. Banks are required to maintain a certain asset level to cover potential losses from risky investments—all investments carry some risk. Effective risk management allows financial institutions to have more assets for investments or lending.

AI in Risk Management

Unsurprisingly, financial institutions are turning to AI to help manage risk (Banca Mediolanum, for example). AI can find patterns and identify trends before they become obvious. For example, changes in a customer’s spending habits can be early warning signs of financial difficulties, and financial institutions are well-positioned to spot such changes.

Data Requirements and Challenges

Using AI effectively requires large amounts of up-to-date data. Without a robust AI infrastructure, data requirements become a significant source of uncertainty. Moving data to a vector database can be slow and expensive. Multiple data copies create synchronization issues, making identifying the most recent version challenging. Data format changes can lead to data loss due to conversion limitations. Copying data outside the corporate firewall increases the risk of data breaches and may violate regulatory guidelines.

Integration Challenges

Integrating AI systems into an existing technological ecosystem can be challenging. Done incorrectly, it can lead to an overly complex and brittle environment. Ensuring seamless integration while maintaining data integrity and security is crucial for leveraging AI’s full potential in risk management.

Building an Effective AI Infrastructure

While it’s easy to use AI to solve specific problems, fully taking advantage of the power of AI to manage risk requires a robust, flexible AI infrastructure. Such an AI infrastructure should:

Address the complexity of AI models, simplifying model development and management.
Support a rapidly changing technological landscape, supporting continuous adaptation and innovation.
Be scalable as user demands increase—because they will increase. A lot.
Provide for effective data management without needing to move or copy large volumes of data across the network.
Simplify management of computational resources. Achieving high performance without incurring excessive costs requires careful planning and optimization
Integrate with existing systems. Large financial institutions already have complex technological ecosystems. Interoperability is crucial.
Ensure security and compliance without adding yet another layer of protocols for users to remember.
Make it easy to track model performance and keep AI systems up to date with current data.

Using AI effectively involves more than merely dropping an AI model into your ecosystem and expecting magic even if it may seem that way at first. It requires creating the foundation that will support long-term growth and innovation in a dynamic technological landscape, thereby reducing uncertainty and controlling risk.

SWIRL makes all that possible.

Reducing Uncertainty with SWIRL AI Connect

A comprehensive AI system is a significant investment and thus it’s important that it supports future growth and innovation. SWIRL’s AI infrastructure provides resource management, scalability, and operational efficiency, while also ensuring accurate, context-aware AI responses. SWIRL futureproofs the AI infrastructure.

SWIRL AI Connect provides key features that enable businesses to take full advantage of powerful AI models:

Streamlined AI operations—SWIRL is middle layer between applications and AI models, helping to manage complexity, optimize resource usage, and ensure the infrastructure adapts to the rapidly changing demands of AI workloads.
Efficient and dynamic resource management—SWIRL enables dynamic adjustment of computational resources based on real-time workload requirements so that resources are allocated where they are needed most, enhancing operational efficiency and reducing costs.
Scalability—SWIRL enables AI systems to handle complex and variable demands, such as large-scale model training and deployment, without compromising performance.
Resource optimization—Computational resources are used effectively, minimizing waste and reducing overall infrastructure costs.
Integration with real-time data retrieval—SWIRL combines unified search with Retrieval Augmented Generation to provide more accurate and contextually relevant results than generative AI models can provide on their own.
User satisfaction and operational efficiency— By providing more accurate and context-aware responses, SWIRL dramatically reduces the time required to find data fit for purpose, improving user satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Future-proofing the AI infrastructure—SWIRL’s flexible and efficient framework means your AI infrastructure can evolve and scale with technological advancements.

Benefits

SWIRL AI Connect’s advanced technical features lead to significant practical benefits:

Data stays in place: Swirl AI Connect enables Generative AI to connect with source systems, bringing the AI to the data.
Unified search: Swirl AI Connect simultaneously searches all data and content repositories an employee can access.
Integration with existing security: Swirl AI Connect utilizes the source system security policies, following a zero-trust security approach to ensure users access only what they’re allowed.
AI flexibility: Swirl AI Connect supports using multiple LLMs and AIs, including company-created models behind the firewall.
Data format agnosticism: Swirl AI Connect supports structured data from databases, as well as content from email, office documents, collaboration tools such as Teams and Slack, and more.

Pilot to co-pilot communication: Swirl AI Connect enables simultaneous communication with multiple co-pilots.
Results you can trust: Swirl AI Connect’s innovative use of Retrieval Augmented Generation grounds results in facts, reducing or eliminating the risk of AI hallucinations and errors.

SWIRL enables financial institutions to get the maximum benefit from using AI. To find out more about how SWIRL can help your institution apply AI to risk management, contact us today.