The first keynote session of the day was hosted by Roy Kirby, Head of Core Products at SIX. He specialises in reference data, market data, and pricing. In his role, he has been running various projects focused on the use of financial information, making data more accessible thanks to the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based tools.

By sharing a selection of use cases and drawing from personal experience, Kirby hoped to inform others and initiate conversations within the community about AI adoption. He started the session by debunking the myth that a heavily-regulated industry like wealth management could not leverage AI. Instead, Kirby said that most limitations of the application of AI currently are tied to human and cultural roadblocks, like the lack of leadership or a business culture that is not innovative.

Kirby then outlined several use cases within SIX, such as making market data terminals more efficient with chatbots, improving customer service with AI bots, and assisting compliance officers – all of which have led to greater efficiency and productivity within the company.

“When you see some of this technology in place, it really does help things like efficiency. And I think that's the thing we're all working on, making sure we're more efficient so that we do the best with our resources and our time for our end customers,” he said.

Kirby went on to point out that AI has been around for decades in various iterations and that many organisations are likely to already be using it in one of its earlier forms.

“It's been around for a long time. Don't be scared of it. Embrace it in your organisations,” he said.

He then shared the evolution of the own AI strategy of SIX – from document digitisation to Machine Learning (ML), and now Generative AI. “We started with things like document reading and getting documents into databases. We've also worked on processing, and now we are using AI to distribute data more efficiently,” he said.

Indeed, SIX has a lot of documents’ sources where the need is to extract relevant data from a document, tag it, and put it into a database so that customers can view it. “That is all in AI. And we've all organically grown these capabilities over time,” he said.

Kirby then singled out the value of AI chatbot assistants, which have made market data terminals faster, reduced customer service tickets, and helped compliance officers. This is an important automaton and efficiency play in a world where the volumes of data needing to be captured and dealt with show no sign of slowing down – the spiralling upward trajectory is here to stay. Hence, organisations today need to equip themselves to deal with this positively rather than be overwhelmed or live in fear of it. Fewer support tickets also improve customer service as advisers have more time to spend helping customers, upping satisfaction levels, which is a must in any firm!

Other examples he cited as important included improving data quality and leveraging available data to mine insights.

The importance of a positive business culture
Kirby also considered optimal implementation, stating his belief that cross-functional teams of business and technical experts, and starting small to solve problems versus beginning with grand visions, were both instrumental to success.

“You need a culture of people who are interested in AI and what it can do,” he said. “Once you get the right culture and the right people talking together, you will see that in your organisations, you will have an awful lot of talent interested in playing with these new technologies.”

About the Swiss WealthTech Live 2024
Our Swiss WealthTech Live 2024 event took place in Zürich in February and hosted some 160 market participants from private banks, cantonal banks, external asset managers, family offices, technology vendors, consultants, and more to express their views, experiences, and visions for the future. We celebrated a full day of keynote presentations and panel discussions, with plenty of networking opportunities.

During the event, we also released our Swiss WealthTech Landscape Report 2024. This issue of the report includes 24 thought-provoking articles, 10 Solution Showcases, and 539 entries in our Solution Provider Directory.

Access the full report here.