BFSI global capability centres bullish on Gen AI despite regulatory hurdles

Representative image

The Global Capability Centres (GCCs) of the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) industry are betting big on generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), although it is heavily regulated. Gen AI was referred to as the “internet equivalent of our times” and the “new keyboard” by BFSI players at the Nasscom GCC conclave in Bengaluru on May 30, industry players said in unison.

“Ours is a heavily governed industry in the different jurisdictions that we operate in. It (Gen AI) is a generational opportunity right in front of us,” said Sunil Gopinath, chief executive officer of Rakuten India. The financial technology group's GCC is a global product and innovation centre.

A GCC is a dedicated offshore unit set up by a company in a foreign country to in-source IT and other related business functions.

Speaking at the Nasscom GCC Conclave 2024, Gopinath and his peers in the industry believe that GCCs have a birds-eye view on regulations in different geographies, and help them design solutions that are applicable to each geography.

The comments of these players assume relevance at a time when GCCs are growing rapidly in India and also adopting Gen AI Proof of Concepts (PoCs) at a faster rate than enterprises.

"This is the equivalent of internet and thanks to the founders who made it free for the rest of the world, conversational AI is the new keyboard,” Goldman Sachs Services India country head Gunjan Samtani, told a house-full audience at the conclave. The India unit of the US-based investment banking company is the second largest of the firm globally.

Samtani added that, going forward, instead of the prevalent Large Language Models, Small Language Models (SLMs) will be suitable for businesses to solve enterprise-specific problems without the high computing cost involved in SLMs.

“The big barrier today is the level of investment required in computing. And no organisation can afford that,” Praveen Kumar, CEO of Barclays Global Service Centre, told Moneycontrol on the sidelines of the event. He added that being a heavily regulated industry, it has to be “very careful” in the guardrails companies put up to safeguard personal data of customers.

A report launched at the conclave by Nasscom and KPMG India, showed that a global banking GCC used data and insights in real-time to prioritise and conduct health check-ins for over 33,000 staff members, contract vendors within a span of just 10 days.

The US-based fintech company Broadridge Financial Solution weighed in the nascent technology being adopted, albeit, carefully. Broadridge says that almost $1 trillion worth of transactions are processed on its platform a day.

“We have to reduce the manual intervention, improve the quality, improve the way we deliver functionality to our end-customer and that’s where we are leveraging the power of Gen AI,” said Sheenam Ohrie, managing director of Broadridge Financial Solution, told Moneycontrol.

The Day 1 of the two-day GCC Conclave saw participants and speakers from GCC of other BFSI players such as NatWest and Sun Life, apart from a host of retail and technology companies.

However, not everyone is convinced that Gen AI PoCs can be rolled out for production immediately. Sandeep Dutta, India business lead of Accenture, said CEOs are clearly divided into two camps. “There is one which is very interested in implementing this. But there’s another set of CEOs who are taking a step back and saying unless and until I completely and comprehensively understand the impacts of responsible, ethical AI, I’m not going to put this to use at scale in my organisation,” he said.

Also read: Enterprises hesitate on Gen AI adoption amid pricing model shifts, high costs