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The banking industry’s reaction to recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and freshly released GPT-4 has been a mix of excitement and caution.

Morgan Stanley is among the banner clients of GPT-4, using it to enhance its internal knowledge base and handle federated search capabilities for its wealth management personnel. JPMorgan Chase, in contrast, has tried to restrict employee use of ChatGPT. We believe adoption is inevitable, especially after Microsoft integrates GPT’s capabilities into its Office products.

Budgeting season for 2023 is slowly wrapping up as banks and credit unions forecast revenue opportunities and looming expenses.

Financial institutions are considering future interest rate hikes, regulatory oversight, and increasing personnel and operational costs, among other things. The bigger picture is that client retention and recruitment will be critical to long-term success – invest now to ensure you’re ready to compete. 

At SRM, we urge banks and credit unions to take a hard look at third-party contracts as they plan for the new year. There are also other considerations that should be made as you prepare for the future.

This year, we polled some of our experts, asking them to highlight areas that merit extra attention. Here are some highlights from their responses.

A colleague of mine recently attended the BankAI conference in Chicago. One of the most interesting presentations, according to him, involved a Midwestern credit union sharing details of its chatbot rollout fueled by the artificial intelligence (AI) tools of a fintech partner.

What set the story apart from the pack was the credit union’s size, a shade under $300 million in assets. It’s often assumed that AI projects are the domain of the largest financial institutions; certainly, their efforts gain the most attention. Bank of America continues to tout the mass adoption of its Erica virtual assistant, and Wells Fargo, Capital One and JPMorgan Chase have spearheaded high profile AI rollouts as well.

Buckle up: we’re in for a ride. Regardless of your political persuasion, all signs point to an extended stretch of market volatility as we head into the 2020 election cycle, which by many measures is already hitting its stride. The 2020 budget season is playing out against this backdrop, with budget-setters up against even greater uncertainty than usual. The question looms, as the political barrage reaches new heights in 2020, how can banks and credit unions remain flexible to the economic variables?