The finance and insurance ecosystem will not miss out on the “revolution” of generative artificial intelligence. Because that’s how it should be described, believes Jean-Paul Mazoyer, Deputy Managing Director of Crédit Agricole SA in charge of the Technology and Digital Division.
The leader thus sees in the emergence of this technology a “Sputnik effect”, in reference to the American reaction following the launch of Sputnik by the USSR. Applied to AI, this effect imposes for Jean-Paul Mazoyer the obligation to “think outside the box”.
Axa wants AI everywhere and combined with humans
And to act quickly where financial players used to be primarily interested in the most mature solutions. The sector representatives present at the latest edition of the AI For Finance conference organized by Artefact, however, do not advocate haste or a focus on Gen AI alone.
This is nevertheless a concern of the moment. This part of AI, to enable use on a scale, requires tools and technical bases. But this is only part of the answer, insists the Crédit Agricole executive.
Like other of its counterparts, it calls for massive training of employees so that the use of generative AI applications proves to be as natural for them as email or word processing.
Alexander Vollert, Director of Operations of the Axa group, shares this analysis. The executive clarified the insurer’s ambition in terms of artificial intelligence. It’s simple: AI everywhere. The company already has a portfolio of more than 300 use cases.
Employees trained promptly
Axa plans to go further, notably through extensive exploitation of unstructured data to complement structured data and thus improve operations. Combining all the data for the benefit of processing customer requests or claims is the ambition – one of them.
These AI tools must increase the number of employees and advisors, already called upon to increase digital technology through the addition of a human layer. To this end, Alexander Vollert also emphasizes the strategic nature of training.
Employees must learn these uses and master the art of the prompt as the operations director taught him years earlier, at the birth of the Web, to create an effective query in a search engine.
For the bosses of Crédit Agricole and Axa, it is appropriate, despite strong ambitions, to move forward while taking into account the risks and impacts on the organization and transformation of daily tasks.
The 3S AI policy: security, sobriety and stability
The words ethics and responsibility are not swept under the rug. Hugues Even, Group Chief Data Officer of BNP Paribas, summarizes the challenges for the bank through three Ss: security, sobriety and stability.
These concerns are shared by his counterparts Maxime Havez, Chief Data Officer of Crédit Mutuel Arkea, and Aldrick Zappellini, Group Data Director & Chief Data Officer of Crédit Agricole. Arkéa has thus developed a foundation model (open source) taking into account the issues of sobriety and sovereignty.
The Data Manager at Crédit Agricole expresses his attachment to the adoption of generative AI which is part of a demanding methodology consistent with its labeling and certification on responsible and industrial AI (Labelia and LNE). AI, unanimously yes, but not at all costs.