About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Handle With Care: BNY Takes Disciplined Approach to AI Implementation

Subscribe to our newsletter

The huge opportunities offered by artificial intelligence (AI) can appear overwhelming and it’s important that financial institutions carefully manage the risks they pose to get the most out of this new generation of solutions.

That’s among the key messages that Eric Hirschhorn, chief data officer at banking giant BNY, will convey when he takes the podium at the opening Practitioner Innovation Keynote address of A-Team Group’s Data Management Summit New York City next week.

The race to build new technology into the data management processes and operations of banks, asset managers and insurance companies is gathering pace. But Hirschhorn warns that organisations need a strategic vision and disciplined, risk-aware, execution to avoid taking potentially damaging wrong turns.

“We see data in the world around us increasing in volume and pace along with the opportunities and risk,” Hirschhorn told Data Management Insight.

For firms to be successful with AI, they need to ensure they have a solid foundation around ethics, privacy and usage right policies in place or else they will risk losing the trust of their user base or worse.

Summit Opener

Hirschhorn will kick off the summit on 26th September with the Practitioner Innovation Keynote Address entitled “Unlocking the power of AI for data driven innovation, business growth and efficiencies at BNY”. He will touch on how the US-based banking giant is approaching AI and how the technology is already benefiting its operations.

The delivery will be among several during the day that will tackle the topic of AI and how institutions can extract value from the technology.

While Hirschhorn argues that the new “coastline of opportunity” offered by generative AI (GenAI) is intoxicating and that it promises to make us “more effective and more insightful”, he says that without careful implementation, organisations could find themselves going down multiple legal problematic rabbit holes.

“Those who will be most successful, are those who have started thinking about data in terms of policy-driven inputs and governed output,” Hirschhorn said.

Limitless Benefits

The solution is simple, he suggests: organisations need to be risk managers every day when using AI. With those safeguards in place, the benefits of AI are limitless.

As well as bringing quantifiable financial value to an organisation, AI can have a dramatic impact on the softer aspects of corporate operations; a better work life balance for professionals as machines take up routine tasks and let them focus on more rewarding activities, for instance, and improved customer engagement.

“If we take a risk-adjusted approach, we’d find we’d be racing forward on some topics and more cautious on others,” he says.

“Our framework for rolling this out across the enterprise is market-leading; not in the Star Wars sense but in that methodical discipline, a sense of urgency and a sense of safety will drive outcomes at pace,” Hirschhorn adds. “We’re a bank – be a bank, but don’t be stodgy, don’t be slow, don’t be old; be fleet of foot but be risk-managed.”

  • A-Team Group’s 14 annual Data Management Summit New York City will be held on 26 Click here to register or sign up for attendance below.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Navigating a Complex World: Best Data Practices in Sanctions Screening

As rising geopolitical uncertainty prompts an intensification in the complexity and volume of global economic and financial sanctions, banks and financial institutions are faced with a daunting set of new compliance challenges. The risk of inadvertently engaging with sanctioned securities has never been higher and the penalties for doing so are harsh. Traditional sanctions screening...

BLOG

Hexaware QnA: Combining Human Skills and AI to Solve Data Challenges

Hexaware is a global digital and technology services company, with UK offices in London and Birmingham. It has been solving data challenges for financial institutions and other regulated industries for more than 30 years. Data Management Insight spoke to Parameshwaran (Param) Iyer, regional head – UK & Ireland, Hexaware Technologies, about the pain points Hexaware...

EVENT

ExchangeTech Summit London

A-Team Group, organisers of the TradingTech Summits, are pleased to announce the inaugural ExchangeTech Summit London on May 14th 2026. This dedicated forum brings together operators of exchanges, alternative execution venues and digital asset platforms with the ecosystem of vendors driving the future of matching engines, surveillance and market access.

GUIDE

Preparing For Primetime – How to Benefit from the Global LEI

They say time flies when you’re enjoying yourself, and so it seems the industry have been having a blast with its preparations for the introduction of the global legal entity identifier (LEI) next month. But now it’s time to get serious. To date, much of the industry debate has centred on the identifier itself: its...