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Google Vertex AI ignites a financial services revolution

Google Vertex AI ignites a financial services revolution

How a global bank harnessed compliance as a catalyst for innovation

Regulatory compliance is often seen as a necessary burden that’s costly, complex and ever-changing. But what if it could be more? What if it could be the gateway to something bigger? With support from GFT and the power of Google Vertex AI, this global bank reimagined compliance not just as a box to tick, but as the foundation for enterprise-wide innovation. The successful implementation serves as a blueprint for other industries to follow.

40% reduction in false positives

Enhanced accuracy in fraud detection and compliance monitoring.

Enterprise-scale impact

Seven successful Vertex AI projects delivered across mission-critical banking functions.

Accelerated AI deployment

Faster go-to-market through reduced model development and streamlined operations.

Challenge

Implement Google Vertex AI as a platform for trading surveillance and banking compliance

Regulatory compliance remains one of the most demanding and costly challenges for global banks. But for one of the world’s largest financial institutions – serving over 41 million customers across 58 markets – it also became the launchpad for something bigger: a long-term AI-driven transformation.

Seeking to modernize its approach to trading surveillance and compliance, the bank aimed to harness the power of AI to reduce its operational burden. Specifically, the bank wished to evaluate and adopt Vertex AI because the platform is noted for being user friendly and easy to integrate within a complex ecosystem.

Vertex AI is Google’s cutting edge machine learning (ML) platform. It empowers an organization to train and employ ML models, AI applications and customized large language models (LLMs) for use in bespoke applications. In practice Vertex AI is a comprehensive service toolkit that combines data engineering, data science and ML engineering workflows, enabling teams to collaborate using standard tools and scale applications using Google Cloud.

With no experience of Vertex AI, the bank asked GFT – as its trusted digital transformation partner - for help. As a Google Cloud partner, GFT brought not only deep technical and platform expertise, but also proven financial services domain knowledge. The bank also sought an independent view of the feasibility of Vertex AI, initially in capital markets where the new technology could be benchmarked against the incumbent system. If successful, this Vertex adoption would serve as a "lighthouse" project to be emulated throughout the bank.

From the outset it was crucial to manage risk and provide an analytical "sandbox" for safe advanced data exploration with a richer population of diverse data. A critical aim of the project was to introduce a new AI model lifecycle and create utility tools to automate training, publishing, and monitoring of the model.

"As a major bank we were already committed to AI but needed GFT’s practical expertise to realize the strategic benefits of MLOps."

Engagement

A strategic platform with many applications

With a track record of successful AI delivery, GFT was engaged to lead and manage all aspects of the project, while collaborating closely with many bank departments. This flagship engagement, originated within the bank’s capital markets division and began with the creation of MLOps from scratch, implemented using Vertex AI tooling. The initial remit was to focus on the two specific areas of surveillance and compliance then to scale as an enterprise solution to facilitate advanced data analytics and cost-effective RegTech. From the outset, reusability was key to project success.

Faced with spiraling compliance costs the bank realized that more efficient use of data was essential to enable a RegTech approach to compliance monitoring and reporting. Vertex could empower the bank to monitor vast volumes of data and spot irregularities early to facilitate a more proactive approach to compliance.

With its state-of-the-art technology, Vertex AI would enable:

Faster ML projects for regulatory compliance at lower cost
Comprehensive tracking of ML project to monitor and manage activity and costs
Monitoring of projects and auto alerts on data irregularities and other anomalies
Automated hyper parameter tuning to save time and money
A more flexible platform that could integrate with the bank’s complex ecosystem
Access to the latest AI technology from Google, but with integration into the platform from day 1

GFT delivered the initial project on time and to budget. With its new solution the bank enjoyed an immediate uplift in its compliance monitoring and could:

Identify unusual and potentially unauthorized trading patterns
Ingest and process data from trading systems and associated control reports
Generate alerts for unexpected changes in incoming data and performance of the model

As well as improving surveillance and compliance, the project demonstrated the potential of Vertex AI as a strategic solution to many bank challenges.

"This project initially focused on surveillance and compliance but with Vertex AI integrated into the bank’s ecosystem we can adopt it at scale to solve multiple challenges including RegTech automation."

Benefit

A groundbreaking AI solution and catalyst for innovation that serves as a blueprint for other industries to follow

This engagement marks a milestone achievement not only for the bank but for GFT and Google. It celebrates the first global implementation of Vertex AI at this scale within financial services. The initial project delivered:

A safe environment conducive to advanced data exploration
Robust monitoring and reporting capabilities with a 40% reduction in false positives
A strategic solution that tackled scalability and lifecycle management for ML models
Full monitoring of model performance, including feature and data drift

Building on the project’s success, the bank chose Google Vertex AI as a strategic platform for innovation. GFT has worked with the bank to deliver seven successful Vertex projects to date. As an advanced ML platform, it allows rapid training of new models that address many critical challenges faced by many large banks:

Enhanced scalability to support large data models for a range of purposes, including trading, compliance and surveillance
Significant reductions in data pipeline processing times, enabling faster decision-making and improved operational efficiency
Substantial cost and time savings through time and resource optimization through pipeline automation

The bank has maintained its position as a pioneer and Google Vertex AI continues to revolutionize ML operations across the organization. But this project extended beyond technology and has redefined roles, responsibilities and how work gets done. In practice the bank can confidently put data and AI at the heart of its innovation strategy.

GFT continues to help the bank leverage Vertex AI to boost efficiency, gain insights and extend its competitive advantage by harnessing the power of data.

"As a leading global bank, we have always strived to remain at the forefront of innovation. With Vertex AI adopted at scale we can boost efficiency, remain competitive and retain our reputation as pioneers."

"At GFT, we see compliance not as a constraint, but as an opportunity. This project proved that, with the right approach, AI can turn regulatory pressure into an innovation platform and driver of improvement."

Mazen Harb

Client Director

GFT