Making sense of ‘too much’ data

For professional sectors such as accountancy, insurance and the legal profession, digitalisation has made data freely available, yet its interpretation often remains stubbornly analogue.

In the current age of real-time updates and digitalisation, professional services risk being drowned by raw data yet starved for usable information. While it can be a struggle to make sense of it all, for sectors such as finance, accounting and law that are governed both by data and well-defined internal processes, artificial intelligence (AI) offers many automation opportunities.

The drivers for change are the greater speed, accuracy and volume capabilities of computers when compared to their human counterparts. AI can be a tool perfectly suited for extracting meaning from massive data sets by storing and accessing them without losing, misinterpreting or misplacing anything. AI can do this all day and night, without ever losing objectivity or focus.

That’s why many businesses are already using robotic process automation systems to crunch numbers and sift data. For example, kensho.com is an intelligent computer system widely used by stock traders and investors to automatically analyse portfolio performance and predict market changes.

The software claims to be “the world’s first computational knowledge engine for the financial industry” and it’s designed to address Wall Street’s greatest challenge – automating and improving on previously human-intensive knowledge work to keep up with the split-second changeability of stock.

Robert Dale, chief technology officer at Arria NLG, says: “By emulating human behaviour in software, you get technology that can carry out tasks that are more than just straightforward number crunching, with the machine exhibiting real intelligence. But you also get all the benefits of it being done by software – it’s incredibly fast, incredibly consistent and it’s available 24/7.”

The finance sector can derive particular advantage from this. An AI system can react and adjust for changes to an economy on the other side of the planet while its company’s human employees sleep. It can also save days of historical data analysis by scanning reports and compiling results in seconds.

Yet AI systems don’t just represent faster versions of existing workers – they can can also transcend human capabilities by spotting weaker, more widely spread or more complex patterns than any number of operators ever could. A financial analyst – even the most experienced one – won’t recognise a never-before seen trend if they don’t know they should be looking for it. By searching for patterns in raw data, that’s precisely what AI is capable of.

Most business sectors could benefit from completing processes faster, cheaper or more consistently – that’s the driving force of automation. Yet AI tools provide analytical capabilities far beyond cost benefits. For the legal profession, for example, an AI tool can take seconds to summarise the key points of a document using natural, easy-to understand language. In finance, AI can create graphics that demonstrate clusters of opportunity or risk that no one knew to even look for.

Artificial Intelligence can replicate human expertise and scale it by analysing larger data sets, more quickly and more thoroughly. It can do so without the unconscious bias inherent in human decision-making and without the loss of ability due to repetition or fatigue.

This rapid advancement can only be supported through the use of machine learning, cloud native technology such as that developed and employed by mnAi. For users of mnAi’s platform, the tools provided already complement existing technologies to support the deal origination, due diligence, KYC and KYB processes. For data users, mnAi’s pre-formatted, ready-to-ingest data provides the perfect opportunity to augment incumbent data structures.

With 12bn data points covering 9.5m UK companies, mnAi is a multi-award-winning producer of proprietary data and technology that supplies unique analytics and due diligence on all UK companies. Updated in real-time, mnAi is the trusted partner to professional and financial service providers, investors and government supplying data-driven insights into fields as diverse as fraud, risk, business emissions, insurance, investment and wealth management.