Around 85% of investment industry employers are largely in favour of introducing standards and education on the responsible use of AI in the sector, according to the CFA Institute. “Increasing accessibility to large language models is rapidly adding to the pace of the AI-led revolution of the investment industry,” said Margaret Franklin, President and CEO of the CFA Institute, in a survey it published this week. “Many leading organisations have expertise with these tools, but industry-wide we see an unsettled picture.” Eighty-two percent of respondents also said that the lack of standards had hindered fast adoption of the technology. Data privacy and security were ranked as the biggest roadblocks to faster AI employment by 16%, while 13% said the lack of knowledge and tools was the most significant hurdle. The majority (70%) of employers said they have a preferred or essential need for workforce training and upskilling on regulatory compliance and AI risk-related skills. Almost half (47%) said their organisation was not well-prepared for potential AI-related regulatory changes. In addition, 68% of employers reported that their workforce was curious about AI, 60% said they were “anxious”, and 48% found resistance to using the technology. “Employers tell us they need best practices, guardrails, and standardised policies to help their teams move safely into the new AI-plus-human-intelligence (HI) era,” said Franklin. “Further, the absence of standards and concerns around data privacy may be slowing down AI adoption.” The survey was conducted across February, covering 200 investment industry representatives from firms managing between US$5 billion to US$100 billion in assets.
