The finance professionals scared of AI might just be using the wrong tools
Finance is a heavily regulated industry, meaning that the newest AI tools can't always be made readily available. This means that you can either be handed the most enterprise-appropriate off-the-shelf tool, or your firm can develop one in-house. The people using these tools also seem to be the biggest sceptics.
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We surveyed ~2,500 current and prospective financial services professionals on their sentiment towards AI, as well as what tools they use for work. 39% of employees using internal AI tools said they do not trust AI at all, the most of any type of tool. The rate of mistrust among ChatGPT and Claude users was 27% and 29% respectively.
When looking at each sector individually, it is also interesting to note that the sectors with the highest level of AI mistrust also had the highest percentage of respondents using internal tools.
What makes in-house tools so mediocre? One banker using exclusively internal tools said that they "hallucinate a lot... they can improve analysis but checking the results takes up time." A UK-based risk professional said her internal tools frequently flag "false positives." A Hong Kong technologist said that he bypasses protocol to access external tools rather than use internal ones: "with a VPN, we can access almost anything."
Interestingly, the three sectors most doubtful of AI also reported Microsoft Copilot among their top two most-used tool, and were the only sectors to do so. 30% of Microsoft CoPilot users said they didn't trust AI; one equities trader said the tools are being "pushed to automate processes" in her organization but "it's so lacking; it's causing more problems than if a human did the work in the first place." One compliance professional said he's only allowed to use Copilot because "IT is scared" of other external tools.
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