AI to check regulatory submissions hoped for
AUGMENTED INTELLIGENCE could enable the finance sector’s regulator to detect law breaking and high-risk behaviour earlier.
William Mason, director-general of the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, said that its augmented intelligence partnership with RegulAItion, a tech venture led by two professors from University College London’s Financial Computing Centre, had developed considerably over the course of 2019.
‘The first fruits of the partnership, a piece of software which can risk assess external auditors’ reports and management letters using augmented intelligence engines, was developed to the working prototype stage during 2019,’ said Mr Mason in his statement in the GFSC’s annual report covering last year.
‘While we are not yet at the stage of pre-crime detection envisaged in the film Minority Report, we are certainly making progress in that direction with our technology programme and, funds permitting in a post-Covid-19 environment, hope to be able to use AI to scrutinise regulatory submissions for patterns of adverse behaviour at smaller regulated entities which we have previously lacked the human resources to scrutinise.’
He added: ‘In undertaking this work we are very conscious of our own limitations as humans and have no intention of using our new tools to restrict the freedom of individuals within industry to innovate but we do hope that our new capabilities will, within three to five years, enable us to detect several kinds of law breaking and other high-risk behaviour at an earlier stage than is currently probable.
‘By doing so we would hope to be able to act to better protect customers and investors.
We also believe these technological capabilities should enable us to spend less time interacting with smaller good quality firms – something we suspect they might appreciate.’
