VIDEO | For many early starters, “robotic process automation” (RPA) is everyday practice by now. But except for replacing operational staff with IT folks – “bot herders” – what practical change can we see it leading to? Starting out on a sceptical note, this 17-minute PostTrade 360° Stockholm panel with Nathalie Zeghmouli, Virginie O’Shea and Duncan Cooper sought to identify the efficient tech paths that are out there after all, and the best ways to tread them.
This session was sponsored by Contemi.
The talk took place in Stockholm Tuesday last week (29 March), headlined “Expanding the uses of AI, ML, RPA to include post-trade functions”.
Panellists were Nathalie Zeghmouli, Director of Sales,Europe, Contemi Solutions, and Duncan Cooper, Head of OMNI Digital Services, EMEA and APAC, BNY Mellon. Moderator: Virginie O’Shea, CEO & Founder, Firebrand Research
“I think the thing we’ve all learned is that if you think it’s gonna be easy, it won’t be,” said Duncan Cooper, while Virginie O’Shea shared her observation of a tendency to “end up having more IT staff than operations staff”.
That said, Nathalie Zeghmouli held up the arguments for more long-term patience – and continued investments – in new technology. Over long time, there is a lot of potential for example in machine learning (ML) but it is in its nature that it will need time after implementation to do the automated “learning” that is in its name.
“Machine learning enables you to update and enhance without human-being intervention,” she said.
“There is a learning curve but it is constant and endless. In the industry, we have very much been focusing on the first part, the automation, but we have underestimated – or at least we have not invested enough yet – in the machine learning and what it can do.”
• PostTrade 360° Stockholm 2022 took place on 29–30 March. News around the event is gathered here.
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