Leaders from Accenture and Wells Fargo discuss ‘transformative’ capabilities of AI in finance
Good morning. During a panel session at Fortune’s Future of Finance event last week in New York City, KC McClure, CFO of Accenture, and Tracy Kerrins, senior EVP and head of technology at Wells Fargo, shared their perspectives on how AI is changing the business world.
With Accenture, a global professional services company, McClure discussed being in the “unique position” to assist clients in implementing technology while also using it internally. For example, a treasury AI platform “helped us identify $600 million of idle cash to put to better use,” said McClure, adding that Accenture has used predictive analytics tools to forecast revenue for years, and now those will be augmented with generative AI. (The firm is also looking to use GenAI to help with controllership.)
“Everybody closes their books every month and every quarter; that doesn’t sound so exciting,” she said. “But we’re able to free up tens of thousands of hours, annually, based on using GenAI.” Another important aspect of the process is capital allocation, McClure said. “I think that’s really where we collaborate with my technology partners in terms of approaching the different use cases,” she said.
But AI requires massive data sets. How should companies approach processing and organizing those?
“All companies really need to be focused on their digital core,” and evaluating data readiness is key, McClure continued. Some of the firm’s clients have a solid digital core, and they’re getting ready to move quickly. Meanwhile, others are now “just really reckoning with the fact that they need to really focus more on their data,” she said.
Wells Fargo has long been focussed on its data, said Kerrins, describing her employer as “an AI-heavy shop.”
“Good data in equals good data out; bad data in equals bad data out,” Kerrins added. Wells Fargo uses some of this data for models to evaluate risk governance, such as compliance with regulatory measures, and AI ethics—which requires constant reevaluation.
“As you add additional information to the model, are the decisions coming out of that model changing in a way that you don’t agree with, or that weren’t originally approved?” Kerrins noted. “You have to course correct.”
With financial services as one of the world’s most heavily regulated industries, Kerrins told me that Wells Fargo’s approach to GenAI means “we have a lot of extra scrutiny that we’ve put on it.” The firm has established a generative AI council that includes Kerrins and team members from legal, risk, and compliance. “We also evaluate these cases themselves, so not just the data.”
Looking closer at the C-suite, when it comes to clients who are CFOs, Accenture’s McClure added that “there’s no question” AI and GenAI are “transformative.” It’s not a question of if they’re deployed, but when. “It’s figuring out ‘How do I get started, and where do I go?’”
You can watch a video of the complete panel session here.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
Leaderboard
Jamie G. Pierson was named interim CFO at Forward Air Corporation (Nasdaq: FWRD), effective May 20. Pierson succeeds Rebecca Garbrick, who is departing the company. Garbrick, CFO since 2020, will remain for a transition period. Pierson most recently served as CFO of MV Transportation. Before that, he held various senior leadership positions, including EVP and CFO of Ecobat Technologies and YRC Worldwide, Inc. Forward has initiated a search for a CFO with the assistance of an executive search firm.
Daniel Tempesta, CFO at Cerence Inc. (Nasdaq: CRNC), an AI company, has stepped down from his position for personal reasons, effective May 17, according to a regulatory filing. Tempesta began in the role on March 18. The board of directors has designated Stefan Ortmanns, president and CEO, as the company’s principal financial officer, and Katherine Roman, VP and corporate controller, as the company’s principal accounting officer, each on an interim basis. The company has initiated a search for a permanent CFO.
Big Deal
Ninety-three percent of security professionals surveyed by CyberArk said their organizations had two or more identity-related breaches in the past year. The company’s new report finds machine identities often lack identity security controls, which creates the potential for exploitation. For example, perpetrators using identity deep fakes that specifically target machine identities.
Approximately 61% of organizations define a privileged user as human-only. And just 38% of organizations define all human and machine identities with sensitive access as privileged users. Phishing and vishing attacks (fraudulent phone calls and voicemails) impacted nine out of 10 of respondents. Meanwhile, 87% said they’ve experienced credential theft and compromised privileged access (85%).
The findings are based on a global survey of 2,400 cybersecurity decision makers across private and public sector organizations of 500 employees and above.
Going deeper
“Four Pillars of Decision-driven Analytics,” an article in Wharton’s business journal, includes an excerpt from a new book by Wharton’s Stefano Puntoni and coauthor Bart De Langhe. They argue that the power of data can only be realized by leveraging human intelligence. The authors write: “Without data, we navigate blind, while with data we can make decisions rooted in evidence. The implication is that good thinking means thinking with data.”
Overheard
“It’s a financial conversation, not a technical one. There’s not a technical barrier to building high-speed rail. But what you need is political and financial alignment to make the investment.”
—Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner told Fortune in an interview his viewpoint on the barriers to building a high-speed rail in the U.S.
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