AI is unlocking opportunities for new roles and career progression worldwide, from how we interact with data to how AI is regulated.
With the UK receiving more investment in AI companies last year than France and Germany combined, the UK is at the forefront of AI and recognising its capabilities. Testament to the UK government has published its The National AI Strategy for “building on the UK’s strengths as well as representing the start of a step-change for AI in the UK, recognising the power of AI to increase resilience, productivity, growth and innovation across the private and public sectors.”
The AI recruitment sector is seeing a lot of growth and opportunities across all functions, making AI top of the agenda for compliance, financial crime, risk, and legal services. Artificial Intelligence is changing the way businesses operate and invest. With constant pressure to remain at the forefront, the compliance and financial services sector is moving fast with cloud-based platforms and AI-enabled solutions to provide the best outcome for their teams allowing roles to be streamlined.
AI will have a transformative effect on the financial sector, as Golic writes in the paper, Finance and Artificial Intelligence: the Fifth Industrial Revolution and It’s Impact On The Financial Sector, “AI is expected to completely change the way clients interact with banks and conduct financial transactions, leading to the emergence of a range of new products and services, new jobs (as we do not know today) in the financial sector, assisting with transaction security, protecting data, preventing financial fraud and abuse and finally with the help of machine learning – ML (one of the AI spectra) it will be able to detect market anomalies to anticipate and prevent financial crises like the one in 2008.”
AI allows companies to have greater leverage on large volumes of data generated in day-to-day business activities. It enables companies to identify patterns, make predictions, create rules, automate processes, and communicate more efficiently. For governance and legal teams, AI capabilities are all very relevant due to the data-intensive and technology-dependent nature of the industry.
What Is the Real Impact for Humans?
With the constant changes, individuals may fear that this overhaul could result in AI making their roles redundant, or that bots will make catastrophic errors which could result in mishaps causing severe financial and reputational damage.
The truth is that Artificial Intelligence can and will in fact empower and allow teams to do their jobs better, decreasing large amounts of routine day-to-day duties which in turn frees up teams to use their uniquely human skills on higher-value objectives. It will increase automation and support intelligent analysis and decision-making. This will in turn increase efficiency and create space for exciting new roles. As Wilson states, in the paper, The Jobs that Artificial Intelligence will Create, “In Accenture PLC’s global study of more than 1,000 large companies already using or testing AI and machine-learning systems, we identified the emergence of entire categories of new, uniquely human jobs. These roles are not replacing old ones. They are novel, requiring skills and training that have no precedents.”
To enable a successful relationship between AI and the workforce; it will be up to managers to ensure that company culture has a strong understanding that humans will not give up significant decision-making to AI, but rather, that they are now able to use their expert opinion along with technology to enable them to prioritise their own work and enhance their knowledge.
In line with Wilson’s analysis, as a recruitment agency specialising in compliance, financial crime, risk, and legal recruitment, we are seeing a lot of growth and opportunities across these sectors that weren’t previously available.
How will this affect Legal?
As AI can be used quickly to analyse and interpret large amounts of data, it may soon be able to assist lawyers in predicting case outcomes. Through machine learning, considerable amounts of data can be consumed which means that probable outcomes can be identified, and large information pools can quickly be analysed and digested in a short space of time. AI software has already been implemented and successfully used by a London legal practice to predict the best outcome to settle a claim. This is a clear example of AI integration transforming the industry, rather than replacing human roles.
AI is also encouraging professionals in the legal sector to develop irreplaceable skills. The prediction is that should AI replace administrative duties, graduates and legal professionals starting their careers are much more likely to gain valuable early experience. As a result, the role of the junior lawyer will evolve into one that focuses on skills development rather than the mundane day-to-day roles, creating a positive and exciting change that the legal sector.
How will this affect Risk?
Banks and financial technology (fintech) companies are now implementing risk management systems using AI solutions. These AI solutions that facilitate decision-making processes can reduce credit risks and provide financial services with automation and machine learning algorithms. Much like legal, having the ability to analyse vast amounts of information considerably improves the processing and accuracy of data that is required for cybersecurity risk management, risk assessment, and accurate business decision-making.
Using artificial intelligence in Risk also provides the ability to evaluate data behaviours and activities within an organisation. AI uses algorithms to identify behaviours and patterns related to previous incidents and translate them as risk predictors. The Risk sector is notably one of the prime areas for introducing AI solutions; whether this be from making decisions around customer lending, providing financial analysis and markers to trading desks about position risk or lowering model risk.
How to elevate your career with AI
No matter where your role is in the governance and legal sphere, now is the time to look at elevating your career. To work in an AI driven role, you need to develop your current technical knowledge, communicational and emotional intelligence, and decision-making skills.
Technical Knowledge – As AI is technical, a strong understanding of mathematical and scientific related skills is desired by prospective employers. Specifically, expertise in Python, C#, and R, along with relevant experience in AI-specific applications, and user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are often necessary.
Communicational and Emotional Intelligence – As machines currently cannot replicate human connections, it makes sense that those with a good understanding of emotional intelligence will be in even greater demand in the workplace. To have the ability to successfully exchange information between humans, as well as using correct body language and tone of voice will become even more vital than it already is in the workforce.
Decision making – Clear and analytical decision making will be an essential skill when looking elevate your career in parallel with AI. Whilst AI will be able to analyse large amounts of data, it will still be up to humans to make final rational business decisions in organisations, ensuring that they consider all implications and outcomes that have been put forward by the AI technology.
Human Beings, for Human Beings
Like many roles, recruitment is not something that can be done purely with AI – whilst it helps us identify candidates, ultimately it cannot work out if someone is the perfect fit for your role and culture. Our mission is to make the compliance, financial crime, risk, and in-house legal recruitment process a smooth and simple one. With over 11 years of experience, our complete job search and hiring service has helped both candidates and employers to achieve their hiring ambitions.
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