Software and consulting specialist to the banking and
asset management sector, LPA has commenced the process to fully assimilate its
AI division AAAccell into its overall business. AI solutions will increasingly
feature as part of total consulting solutions or total software products rather
than as stand-alone approaches to commercial challenges.
The first step in evolution is that Sandro Schmid will
now take the role of lead consulting partner in Switzerland. This boosts the Swiss
consulting team and also adds capability enabling the whole group to more fully
leverage Sandro’s skills in AI, Risk, and Digitalisation.
Sandro believes
this logical step is necessary to leverage the synergies for AI across all the
solutions of the growing LPA group. Metaphorically speaking, this
reorganisation will help ensure that the 1+1 (of LPA and AAAccell) is greater
than 2. Although focusing on Switzerland, Sandro will have a Global
remit in delivering AI solutions etc. across all LPA group clients.
AI and intelligent digitalisation will
remain a focus for Sandro. At first, adoption of AI in the financial sector was
rather slow as the market was somewhat sceptical seeing it sometimes as hype.
Now, AI is broadly seen as a very powerful technology that our clients must
adopt or they risk losing market presence. The medium term question is how and where
to apply AI to best effect and how to combine it within a fully end-to-end
digital processes. This is a question Sandro believes can be best answered
through combining domain expertise with technological understanding. Therefore,
LPA’s consulting combines traditional regulatory know-how with deep IT
technical understanding to adopt new technology such as AI or cloud computation
or big data. As AI can be a positive augmentation for e.g. risk systems
compared to traditional quant solutions like logistic regressions, highest
returns are achieved combining it with new (alternative) data that improves
analytics and predictive capabilities. Additionally, IAAI – Intelligent
Automation with AI enables not only to develop better methods and tools but
also to stream-line processes towards 24/7 banking. The consulting approach is
to offer advice helping clients move to the next level in digital
transformation journey.
ESG
(Environmental, Social, and Governance) covers the three central factors in
measuring the sustainability and social impact of investments or other
financial products. ESG criteria are set to become more important in
determining the future financial performance of investments. Currently there
exist a number of ratings for ESG performance which are generally provided by
the established ratings agencies. These however have problems: Firstly,
organisations can apply these in various ways. This sadly has led to a lack of
comparability and reliability. Secondly the ratings themselves, lack
transparency and are mostly not applicable to new EU taxonomy which weighs
heavily on current solutions. The net result is that the market still lacks a
robust long-lasting solution for sustainable finance. The recent EU Study on Sustainability-Related Ratings,
Data and Research outlined this problem. Sandro’s theory is
that AI can partially solve this, as it is also stated in the EU study. By
looking at the mass of data openly available (newsfeeds, published reports
etc.) an individual, comparable and transparent ESG rating can be developed.
As regulations
within our industry continue to grow and change, the effort required for
financial institutions exponentially. But instead of continuously growing
FTE’s, AI can streamline and reduce manual, monotonous work. Primarily, NLP as sub-category of
AI, can be used to support compliance teams in their daily work but switching
their time to material regulation rather scanning unnecessary regulatory text
or news. By adding a logic, AI machines reading regulations and extract
changes, relevant news and even support to identify compliance logics. The
current tool works and even beats current Stanford University’s NLP tool.
The algorithm for this and a related AI driven pension fund platform was
completed last month and is in use with SIX in Switzerland.
About the LPA Group
The LPA Group is one of the world’s leading developers
and consultants for technology-based capital market solutions (CapTech) for
banks, insurance companies and fund providers. The core business of the
multi-award-winning group is the CapTech suite, a portfolio of leading
technology solutions for automated consultancy, sales and documentation for
financial instruments, structured products and OTC derivatives. The products
and services of the LPA Group help financial services companies in their
capital market activities to automate their necessary advisory and regulatory
documentation processes, thereby increasing their efficiency and achieving full
compliance. The LPA Group also advises its customers on the strategic planning
and implementation of CapTech solutions. At its headquarters in Frankfurt and
at ten other international locations including Tel Aviv, London, Zürich, New
York, Paris, Barcelona and Singapore, almost 400 technology and capital market
experts are now working for a portfolio of international clients.