AI and Aging Workforces—Not Mutually Exclusive

Summary: The spotlight on artificial intelligence (AI) is both an Angel and a Demon.  The changing value for industry pathfinders and system architects resides not only in securing efficiencies and insights, but in its robust amalgamation with deep domain knowledge workers who are skilled in cascading complexities.  As our workforces age, it is the opportunities at the other end of the spectrum which will deliver sustainable differentiation for BFSI and mortgage operations.

In real estate the mantra is about location, location, location.  Today, it is about AI, AI, AI.  There have been hundreds of billions invested in the last 24 months with billions announced in the last 3 months in chip development, in software, in algorithms, and of course, in data.  Yet, the focus of scaling emerging AI capabilities in BFSI and mortgage should be beyond algorithmic and into the deep domain verticals leveraging experienced personnel and their nuanced skills. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has many discrete meanings, implementations, and even configurations.  It can be cascading (i.e., AI talking to AI), interactive (i.e., chatbots), or even automating digital and paper-based processes (e.g., RPA). 

Yet, the many faces of AI are not singularly about younger, generational workforces and their embrace of rapidly exploding machine intelligence, but how AI can also leverage experiential domain knowledge encased across years of learned execution.  The use case(s) of leveraging experiential knowledge holds the greatest profit potential as workforces continue to mature, retirement age rises, demographics and immigration shift, and costs of hiring freshly minted AI engineers explodes (WSJ, >$1MM packages).

To frame the discussion of AI impacts and value propositions, we need to start with the average age of the U.S. worker.  It is now over 41 and increasing, while measured AI functionality is experiencing exponential advancements.  Additionally, per published trends the average age of a BFSI / mortgage banker is 40+ for nearly 70% of the industry personnel. 

Now factor in the finance and mortgage industry have experienced material challenges from banking failures underpinned by rising interest rates and political divisions all fueling future risks and uncertainty.  Moreover, employee apprehension of how enterprises intend to leverage AI in their daily work tasks (per Oliver Wyman) indicates that nearly 70% feel tense and nearly all feel that their efforts (in the face of AI) really don’t matter to their leaders.

These foundational realities, coupled with AI expectations, are fueling business strategies, architectures, and software solutions that indicate a bifurcation of workforces favoring younger workers.  That assumptive axiom—age as the causality for AI advancement—may prove to be fatal…

For the complete article, please see published link at the national Mortgage Bankers Association website –> Mark Dangelo: AI and Aging Workforces-Not Mutually Exclusive – MBA Newslink