Artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming many jobs, including those in the finance industry. AI systems are now capable of analyzing massive amounts of data, identifying patterns and making predictions faster and more accurately than humans in some cases. This means AI threatens to replace some of the core job responsibilities of financial analysts over the next decade.
Financial analysts evaluate economic, financial, and other information to make strategic recommendations to businesses and individuals making investment decisions. They assess the performance of stocks, bonds, commodities, and other investments. Their job duties include:
Analyzing financial reports, company performance data, economic trends, the regulatory environment, competitors, and news events
Building financial models to forecast revenues, costs, profits, valuations, interest rates, foreign exchange rates, and commodity prices
Interpreting data to determine investment risks and opportunities and make recommendations to buy, sell or hold investments
Monitoring investments and adjusting recommendations as new information becomes available
Preparing reports, presentations, and models to communicate findings and advisories to clients
AI is now capable of mimicking or surpassing humans' abilities in many of these areas through machine learning algorithms trained on massive historical datasets.
Forecasting Models & Predictive Analytics
For example, AI-driven forecasting models can now predict economic trends, stock performance, corporate profits, commodity prices, and more as well as or better than teams of human analysts in many cases. These models can ingest more data faster and spot hard-to-detect patterns that enable more accurate predictions. As AI models taught themselves to play games like chess and Go better than any human through self-learning algorithms, they are now capable of "learning" financial markets and building predictive models with superhuman skill. Investors have begun relying on these AI models to identify value investments and growth opportunities ahead of human analysts.
Automated Financial Reporting & Analysis
AI can automate accounting, financial modeling and analysis work human analysts have traditionally done manually – and often do it just as well or better. AI can analyze millions of data points from disparate enterprise systems and use machine learning to improve its analyses and predictions over time. This reduces the need for junior analysts to compile reports and frees up senior analysts to focus on higher-value work. AI is also proving adept at analyzing unstructured data like financial news, earnings calls, regulatory filings, executive presentations and other text-heavy sources to assess investment risks and opportunities. TheSEC.AI applies natural language processing and machine learning to turn SEC filings into actionable insights, for example. In these ways, AI threatens to replace financial analysts focused on data analysis, modeling, forecasting and research reporting – especially more junior roles. While AI augments rather than replaces senior analysts' strategic roles for now, continued AI advances will put more financial analyst positions at risk over the next decade. Investors must consider these risks and cost savings in financial service providers.
Investment Recommendations
In the past, machine learning struggled to analyze subjective factors or events without historical precedent that impact investment decisions. However AI's natural language and image processing abilities have advanced enough to parse earnings calls, executive profiles, patents, geopolitical events, weather forecasts, and other unstructured data sources to assess risks and opportunities. AI-driven robo-advisors have begun offering clients personalized investment advice and automatically rebalancing portfolios – at much lower fees than human financial advisors. Established advisors have been integrating robo-advisors to deliver hybrid human-AI advice as well.
Fraud Detection & Risk Monitoring
Wall Street spends nearly $20 billion per year on compliance staffing to detect illegal trading, prevent money laundering, and meet regulatory requirements according to Accenture estimates. AI process automation and analytics tools can reduce these costs by 30-40% by reviewing documents and communications much faster. AI can also analyze networks of investor connections and communications to detect insider trading harder for compliance departments to catch manually. Bank use predictive models try to determine investment advisors at high risk for misconduct or departure based on digital footprints. Algorithms can now analyze deals to detect fraud or cartels faster and more accurately than lawyers or other staffers through pattern recognition.
While AI cannot yet fully replace humans in interpreting complex legal and compliance analysis, it is rapidly reducing headcount in these middle- and back-office roles. The key for investors is realizing AI’s strengths and weaknesses relative to human financial analysts. AI excels at computations, pattern recognition and knowledge retention for repetitive tasks but still struggles with reasoning, creativity and emotional intelligence required for more complex strategic roles. However continual AI advances mean investors must monitor how their financial service providers balance job displacement against job creation through redeployment and work redesign as AI integrates into their business. The key for investors is determining whether their financial advisors and services providers are proactively retraining existing analysts for new roles or strategically implementing AI to enhance capabilities rather than solely reduce headcount costs. Companies serious about AI are making it a priority to upskill employees, redesign jobs to allow more strategic thinking, and ensure management of AI systems. With thoughtful redeployment of existing analysts, AI can become a job multiplier rather than making many jobs obsolete.
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