The financial sector, due to its high level of digitization and openness to new technologies and solutions, has long benefited from the advantages offered by artificial intelligence. The use of AI improves processes, while simultaneously generating the need for new skills necessary for the effective creation, usage, and maintenance of artificial intelligence. In banks, there are many opportunities to use new technology – starting from customer service, where chatbots already support the response process, through marketing and support in creating campaigns, to IT enabling, among other things, the improvement of software testing. Artificial intelligence has found wide application in the financial sector, bringing numerous benefits in terms of operational efficiency, data analysis, customer service, and risk management. Whether the further dynamic development of AI can reduce employment in the banking sector is commented on by Magdalena Miąsek – Deputy Director of the Human Resources Management Department at the Postal Bank.
In recent years, the financial sector, including banks, has significantly intensified its efforts to implement artificial intelligence in daily work. This advanced tool brings numerous benefits, improving efficiency, precision, and innovation in areas crucial for financial institutions. The scope of application of artificial intelligence will undoubtedly grow, which does not change the fact that tasks carried out with the support of new technology will still require human creativity, innovation, supervision, and decision-making.
The use of artificial intelligence by employees increases their efficiency and satisfaction with completed tasks. However, in order for a synergy of human skills and AI tool potential to occur, support from HR departments and managers is necessary in acquiring new skills and smoothly transitioning through change. Does AI limit job opportunities? Artificial intelligence will generate the need to acquire new skills for the organization, while specific actions taken by financial institutions, regulations, and the adaptability of employees, will reflect in employment. The need to acquire innovative skills, especially in the area of ethical, safe, and responsible use of AI tools, as well as creative skills allowing for the realization of tasks difficult to automate, shifts the perspective of “maintaining” a job towards “acquiring new qualifications” to fit both the employee and the whole organization into the reality of AI.
Artificial intelligence, by streamlining and automating processes, frees up time for creative and strategic actions, while simultaneously creating skills that are currently not on the market or represent a limited resource. The financial sector has proved many times that it can properly conduct the process of change and constantly develop employees. The industry has the opportunity to acquire new skills by developing employees, acquiring these competencies from the market, and also – in order to educate them – by cooperating with universities. The synergy of applying all solutions will allow on the one hand to use the potential of employees, their qualifications, experience, and knowledge of the company, and on the other to quickly acquire skills that the organization lacks. In the longer time horizon, it will prepare the younger generation for the effective use of new tools. The decision as to the choice of acquiring new skills will depend on the needs and goals of the specific organization.
The impact of artificial intelligence on the financial sector will evolve as technology develops, which in my opinion means that the greatest benefits are brought by the synergy resulting from combining human potential and ethical use of AI tools. At the same time, keeping in mind the number of exceptional changes that we have adapted over the last few months alone – starting from the transformation caused by the pandemic, to the one related to the macroeconomic situation – we will undoubtedly also successfully implement the change created by artificial intelligence. People open to exceptional possibilities, wanting to find themselves in a new reality, will achieve a competitive market advantage by securing their future.
