Back-Office AI Highlighted in Forbes Top 10 Banking and Financial Trends 2025
- Trends to look for in 2025
- Back-office AI streamlining legacy payments
- Will quantum computing take hold in 2025?
As we kick off 2025, Forbes.com has come out with their list of "The 10 Most Important Banking And Financial Technology Trends That Will Shape 2025." The article notes:
As technological disruption and economic uncertainty continue to reshape the financial landscape, alongside dramatic shifts in consumer behavior and regulatory requirements, 2025 promises to be both challenging and opportunistic for banking and financial services.
With this in mind, here are the ten most crucial trends for banks and FIs to maintain their competitive edge:
- Sophisticated AI in back-office operations
- Chatbots and AI assistants for customer service
- Generative AI for financial planning and advice
- Demand for sustainable and ethical financial products
- Central bank digital currencies
- Quantum computing applications in finance
- Rise of next-gen banking “super-apps”
- Increased AI regulation and oversight
- Addressing the tech talent crisis
- Enhancing cyber preparedness and operational resilience
AI in Back-Office Operations
AI technology for back-office operations is nothing new. However, Forbes.com opinion is that this will become "routine" -- leading to more robust deployments:
In 2025, it will become routine to automate day-to-day tasks like processing transactions, reconciliation, data entry, compliance and fraud detection. The efficiency gains and reduction in human error are leading to significantly reduced operational costs. Having mastered these initial use cases, banks and other financial service organizations that have reached a sufficient level of AI maturity are looking towards more advanced deployments, involving fully autonomous decision-making and real-time risk assessment. Getting this right will lead to further gains in efficiency but also involve facing up to greater challenges around customer data, privacy and ethical AI use.
Currently, AI technologies are automating legacy payments like check processing. This has enabled financial institutions to achieve straight-through-processing of checks, with accuracy and read rates exceeding 99%+. Furthermore, AI technologies also enable banks to automation of validate check payments, as well as achieve 95% detection rates for fraudulent checks.
Quantum Computing in Banking
We would be remiss not to address quantum computing, which holds significant potential that financial institutions cannot ignore. However, as noted by the article, the use cases for quantum computing is "highly experimental." Additionally, according to an article from cnet.com:
Quantum computers, running on purpose-built quantum chips, are incredibly delicate and must be kept at amazingly low temperatures to work properly. They're massive and not practical for everyday use yet.Still, companies like Intel, Google, IBM, Amazon and Microsoft are heavily invested in quantum computing, and the race is on to make it viable. While most companies don't have the funds or specialized teams to support their own quantum computers, cloud-based quantum computing services like Amazon Braket and Google's Quantum AI could be options.
Financial institutions typically take a conservative approach when it comes to experimental technologies. Additionally, the costs of quantum chips makes investments will make it difficult for FIs to justify the spend vs. the potential benefits.
So, what trends do you believe will take hold in 2025?