Why have technology and AI become key to investment advisory at BNP Paribas?
Distributing financial solutions to our retail customers requires us to manage a vast amount of information in order to design and offer high-performance products tailored to the specific needs and aspirations of each individual, while complying with increasingly stringent regulatory requirements. This responsibility to advise and support also involves helping our customers to fully understand the strategies and solutions proposed to them, by providing them with clear, transparent explanations, regular reports, smooth customer journeys and proactive, long-term support, enabling them to adjust their choices appropriately in the light of current events.
Faced with this growing complexity, technology and artificial intelligence have become essential pillars in this process, both for developing investment offers and products and for assisting advisers. They are an invaluable aid in helping our financial advisers deliver the best advice to customers, with the most suitable investments, taking into account a multitude of criteria.
Can you give us some concrete examples of the use of AI in the design and distribution of our solutions?
At different stages in the investment advisory value chain, the Group relies on artificial intelligence solutions. Here are a few examples:
- Ongoing analysis of news about issuers of financial securities to detect factors likely to influence their share price or ESG rating (by screening negative media coverage or 'adverse news', for example).
- Use of tools designed to assist portfolio managers in improving the performance of the funds distributed to our customers.
- Automated preparation of performance reports and other regulatory or contractual documents for our funds, in several languages.
- Automated handling of certain stages in the process of entering into a relationship with a new customer, which helps to reduce delays and the risk of data entry and analysis errors.
- Proposal of optimal asset allocations and portfolios, using an algorithm that takes into account the specific characteristics of each client (risk profile, financial knowledge, investment purpose and time horizon, ESG preferences, etc.).
- Generation of clear written explanations of investment proposals, in natural language.
- Use of internal conversational assistants by our advisers, to make it easier to prepare for customer appointments or answer specific questions.
- Use of models to target customers whose investments require adjustment.
These technological solutions are deployed in BNP Paribas entities in Europe according to their challenges and priorities, thanks to the expertise of the various teams in the operational divisions, with the support of the Group's IT teams, and driven by the Bank's strategic programme on savings and investment advisory. In particular, this programme accelerates the development of tools and pathways enabling us to offer our customers in Europe a proactive approach to advice on savings and investment choices focused on their life projects, taking into account their profile, their preferences in terms of responsible investment and market trends.
"Faced with this growing complexity, only the use of technology can offer an optimal, personalised solution"
How do you see the advisor’s role in this partnership with AI?
No human today can take into account the multitude of parameters involved in an investment proposal: there are several billion possible combinations based on risk profile, ESG preferences, the nature of the investment project, and the different contracts, asset classes and financial products available. In the face of this growing complexity, technology is the only way to offer optimal, personalised investment recommendations, with information that enables the advisor to explain our proposals to the customer.
The role of the advisor remains central. He or she is the trusted expert and companion who listens to clients, helps them to define and adjust their goals and plans, guiding them towards a comprehensive understanding of the most appropriate savings strategies and solutions. AI does not diminish their role, but on the contrary enhances it and gives them even greater legitimacy as financial advisors: it helps them navigate through the complexity and multitude of different databases and information, improving the quality of their customer relations and saving them valuable time when preparing for appointments.
At BNP Paribas, we are convinced that by combining Financial Expertise, Personal Attention & Support and Technology, we will strengthen the bond of trust with our clients, thus enabling us to achieve our ambition of becoming the benchmark bank for savings and investment advisory in Europe. At the same time, AI is also making it easier to provide investment solutions to customers who want to be autonomous, particularly those with entrenched self-care habits.
How do you see the Group's future challenges and work in this area?
The use of artificial intelligence at BNP Paribas is not a recent development, since initiatives have been underway for a decade. However, the emergence of generative AI, combined with a more advanced IT infrastructure, has considerably amplified its potential and visibility.
The last few months have seen a flurry of experiments, revealing the many possibilities offered by these solutions. It is now imperative that we integrate them into an industrial framework, for a large scale and secure roll-out - ensuring that we limit their environmental impact - while factoring in the risks of bias, cybersecurity and the regulatory framework currently being developed, particularly in Europe. We also need to identify the potential contributions to all our processes, which may need to be revisited in the light of this technology.
It will also be essential to accelerate the sharing of best practice within the Group and the pooling of solutions. With this in mind, the expertise of the Group's Data and IT departments, together with the gradual roll-out of solutions that can be accessed at the request of business lines ('as a service'), will accelerate their implementation. These changes will also require support and training for our employees, for which many initiatives are already underway.
