Examining the role of artificial intelligence in asset servicing — today and tomorrow
Abstract
Today, the signs are everywhere: artificial intelligence (AI) is already reshaping asset servicing. It is driving innovations across the entire value chain, but as a service provider to the asset management and banking industries, it is also easy to be left behind, or even worse, be agnostic to these transformations. Tomorrow, AI’s transformative potential across predictive AI, generative AI (GenAI) and agentic workflows will be the keys to market share. Most service providers are not equipped with the right approach to fully accelerate adoption and improve chances of success. This paper examines both the current and future roles of AI in asset servicing, highlighting challenges in adoption, as well as providing best practices for integration into business operations. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Allan Song is the Head of Data and Digital for Financing and Securities Services (FSS) at Standard Chartered Bank, based in Hong Kong. As a global transformation leader, his mandate covers 40 markets in Asia, Middle East and Africa, leading a portfolio of data, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital asset transformation programmes focused on driving-industry leading asset servicing capabilities across custody services, fund administration and digital asset custody and tokenisation. Allan has 20 years’ experience in financial services, and prior to Standard Chartered held senior positions at other large financial institutions where he led chief operations officer, technology, operations, business architecture and data analytics teams. He holds a degree in computer science from the University of Toronto, specialising in computational complexity theory, financial engineering and data management, graduating from the same faculty as Professor Geoffrey Hinton and OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Allan continues to be active in the AI and digital asset communities across the region, participating and speaking at both industry and academic forums.
John Ho is the Global Head of Legal, Financial Markets for Standard Chartered Bank (SCB). He has been on Standard Chartered’s Responsible AI Review Forum, the Financial Stability Board’s Taskforce on the Legal, Regulatory and Supervisory Frameworks, the Global Financial Markets Association’s Artificial Intelligence Steering Group and the FIA Asia Pacific Advisory Board. John has supported digitisation in SCB and adoption of new or innovative technology initiatives such as blockchain, distributed ledger technology and smart contracts. He is an active participant in the industry’s FinTech events and has shared insights on the legal and regulatory framework relating to the development of artificial intelligence (AI), FinTech, digital assets, stablecoins, Web3 and central bank digital currency (CBDC).
