The term AI covers a wide range of technologies, from logical inference and machine learning to generative AI. Each has different uses and some, such as credit decisioning and fraud detection, have been employed in financial services for a long time. In Alfa Systems, elements like rules-based workflow automation have been embedded for years, integrating AI into everyday business processes - something we've highlighted as part of 2024’s Intelligent Automation, a key pillar of Alfa Systems 6.

Alfa was an early pioneer of more advanced AI with Alfa iQ in 2020, demonstrating our potential for asset finance providers. Since then, innovations such as AskThea have placed us at the forefront of AI thought leadership in our industry. This leadership has shaped our AI strategy both internally and externally, adapting to changing technologies and perceptions. Many more ideas have been explored through our innovation process. 

While the potential of generative AI is vast, it also introduces ethical and practical risks, ranging from environmental concerns linked to AI training to legal issues surrounding AI-generated content, and ensuring compliance with newly introduced regulations. Aware of these issues, our customers adopt a cautious approach, which we also follow. We understand their concerns and ensure our AI solutions are designed responsibly to improve business processes without creating unnecessary risks.

The AI field is rapidly evolving, and there is still a lot of hype. In the financial sector where our customers operate, there is a long tradition of responsible innovation. A recent sector report highlights ongoing experimentation, but also notes uncertainty due to regulation.

These discussions are now considering the upcoming impact of the EU AI Act, which is expected to influence the AI industry significantly. Key provisions include increased literacy requirements to ensure everyone involved in developing, deploying and using AI technologies understands and can engage effectively with them.

Alfa Systems’ Operational Data Store (ODS) houses a wealth of information for use in reporting and analytics. However, the breadth of data available can make reporting tasks daunting for business users.

Forthcoming report generation tooling will enable users to describe the information they need in natural language, allowing rapid access across ODS data structures without an intimate knowledge of the data dictionary - empowering non-technical users to build the reports they need, easily.

Alfa Systems customers have access to a wealth of configuration options that enable them to tailor the platform to their own business needs. By using AI to provide natural language conversation around that configuration, administrators can better understand how modifications may affect Alfa Systems, and subsequently generate documentation tailored to their specific version and configuration set - allowing users greater insight into the operation of various features.

As it becomes easier to generate customer documentation from configuration, it becomes decreasingly necessary to create it. However, customers may have procedural manuals, training materials and other documentation sources from which they’d like to provide a fully integrated natural language help platform. By using Alfa Systems product documentation alongside an interpreted understanding of the customer configuration, as well as customer-provided documentation, Alfa offers a one-stop, self-support solution.

By continuously analysing case progression, operator workload and seasonal effects, Alfa looks to provide cutting-edge predictive analysis. This enables intelligent case assignment, accurate SLA warnings, and deep insights into how workload is handled. 

Using a wide range of indicators - including predicted workflow paths, asset information and third-party profiles - Alfa Systems can forecast the duration of each case, identify potential SLA breaches, ensure proper case escalation, and optimise queue management.

For developers, AI tooling is more than simple code generation; it provides a vast array of supporting assistance. It can assist in discussing and critiquing solutions, optimising code for enhanced performance, and understanding existing projects to better integrate new solutions. With intelligent developer assistance, teams can produce more efficient, secure, and tightly integrated code in a fraction of the time.

Looking to our internal processes, at Alfa we use an advanced suite of quality, security and vulnerability scanning tools to ensure a final product that upholds the reliability Alfa Systems is known for. Moving forward, we aim to share these insights with integration developers.