Are your back offices missing the AI train?

Abstract

For the last few years, there has been no conference, no top management meeting where digitalisation and artificial intelligence are not part of the agenda. However, the reality shows that the financial industry in general and back offices in particular have undergone little transformation to date. While there are numerous white papers and analysis demonstrating how crucial it will be for the industry to rethink the operating processes, the published business cases remain relatively ‘shy’ and are addressing single areas, these being HR, legal or reconciliation. Those digitalisations provide targeted satisfaction and efficiencies but do not address the ageing, not to say dying, infrastructure and inherent inefficiencies. Back in 2017, a Capgemini survey1 demonstrated that 60 per cent of customer dissatisfaction arises from the back office. It is time to restructure back offices to remove those inefficiencies. To overcome the multiple challenges resulting from the legacy infrastructures, it will be key not only to modernise and digitalise the systems but also to recognise that efficient digital transformation cannot be decoupled from a fundamental back-office process remodel and mindset shift. It is important to be clear that artificial intelligence is not the ultimate solution but a suite of tools that supports this transformation. We, human beings, need to analyse, define and organise the back offices of 2025.