Over one third of IT decision-makers (ITDMs) in the UK’s largest financial services firms believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will transform the industry in the next decade – but the same percentage admitted that their infrastructure is not prepared for the transformation.

A Censuswide survey of 200 ITDMs for data centre firm Digital Realty also found that they thought the potential for AI to transform their business functions outweighs the disruptive potential of other technologies.

AI currently underpins a number of widely-used technology solutions, including fraud detection and stock trading, with businesses preparing to roll out automated solutions including customer communication, predictive analytics, trade processing and intelligent investment tools in the coming years.

Amongst the most ‘hyped’ technologies in financial services, respondents named blockchain (21 per cent), the Internet of Things (11 per cent), Application Programming Interface (API) platforms (10 per cent) and robotic process automation (10 per cent).

The greatest technological hurdle for financial services firms is keeping up with digital challengers, with 20 per cent of ITDMs saying this is their major challenge. Amongst the key obstacles to preparing their organisation for these technologies were budget (40 per cent) and legacy infrastructure (31 per cent), with an estimated total cost of £11.4 billion, according to the survey.

When it comes to where the data powering AI-driven systems is stored, research from Digital Reality and IDG predicted that 48 per cent of large financial services businesses will move their workloads to cloud wherever possible within the next two years, while 27 per cent expected their workloads to remain on-premise.

Val Walsh, senior vice president at Digital Realty, commented: “The financial services industry is set to see some astonishing technological growth, and our new research demonstrates that companies in the sector are still underprepared for what’s to come.

“Technology like AI will greatly benefit the industry, but companies can only experience the full benefits of the technological revolution if their infrastructure is able to support these technologies.”

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