Artificial Intelligence is changing our lives and the way we work: this is why Intesa Sanpaolo, the leading Italian bank, believed in it from the beginning and made it one of the fundamental assets of its 2022 Business Plan. 2025 from which it expects to derive 500 million additional benefits, 50% on the revenue front, 25% from cost cutting and the other 25% from risk reduction. In this interview with FIRSTonline, engineer Massimo Proverbio, Chief Technology officer of Intesa Sanpaolo, talks about the revolution that the bank led by Carlo Messina is experiencing but with a warning: people always come first and no one should fear losing their placed as a result of AI.
Engineer Proverbio, the whole world is wondering how AI will change our lives, whether for the worse or for the better, but in the meantime AI has already entered the bank: how is it changing and how will it change Intesa Sanpaolo's way of banking?
“We live in aera of rapid changes and of great impact on many fronts. The digital it has revolutionized a good part of our lives, making it simpler in many cases and shortening times and distances, but at the same time it has made us more dependent on new technologies, in particular on the methods and timing of their continuous evolution. L'artificial intelligence, or AI to use the English acronym of Artificial Intelligence, is a very useful tool and like all tools it can be used well or badly, for correct purposes and with responsibility or with malicious intent. If well understood and correctly governed, AI can make the work of many people much more effective and efficient, accelerating processes and improving performance in multiple sectors, from scientific research to medicine, from industrial production to transport, from energy to finance and the way of banking.
AI represents one of the most important development assets envisaged in the 2022-2025 Business Plan of Intesa Sanpaolo, which was one of the first banks in Europe to adopt it and develop mechanisms and solutions both internally and with the collaboration of some of the best large international technology companies. We have already used AI in multiple applications internally and for customers. We have invested in skills and technologies with an acceleration program, giving us stringent principles on the protection and management of data that comply with Group rules. AI plays a vital role in improve a company's performance and thanks to its use, at the conclusion of the 2022-25 Business Plan, in Intesa Sanpaolo we estimate overall benefits of around 500 million euros in addition to those already expected, 50% of which will come from revenues, 25% from the cut in costs and 25% from risk reduction. I believe that the opportunities offered by AI outweigh the risks, which must be managed every time a new technology is used."
One of workers' biggest fears is that new technologies and in particular AI will eliminate jobs: what effects will they have on Intesa Sanpaolo's employment?
“In the design, implementation and use of new technologies, including AI, Intesa Sanpaolo always takes into consideration the human factor, to guarantee careful control, maximum security and simple and effective use, both by the Group's people and customers, in order to seize the great opportunities offered by digital with serenity.
As regards, in particular, the people of the Group, I would like to underline that AI should not be seen in any way as a threat, but rather as aopportunity which is already allowing us to delegate even complex but repetitive and time-consuming analytical activities to technology, relieving many colleagues who can now concentrate on other jobs with higher added value, directly in their sectors of expertise or in new fields of application of the 'AI after adequate training. In Intesa Sanpaolo, AI not only allows us to enhance the work of many, but also to hire new resources. The Group's digital acceleration over the 2022-25 Business Plan envisages, in addition to the retraining of approximately 8.000 colleagues, theassumption of approximately 4.600 people. For my area of expertise alone, we have already hired over 2.000 of the best experts on the market, who are already allowing us to have technology management as a true core competence of the bank, attractive for those who want to experiment with new technologies such as cloud, AI and new architectures, a growth engine for the country's digital skills.
Our CEO Charles Messina he recently said: “AI doesn't worry me. It will improve work, guaranteeing employment. I promised this to all employees. I explained that there will be new jobs, but no one will lose their job. Indeed, we will ensure that new paths are created within the bank. The strength of companies are the people who work there. Innovation must be viewed with serenity. It's an opportunity." It seems to me to be an exhaustive summary of our Group's vision on AI and the path we have undertaken."
How much are the investments planned by Intesa Sanpaolo for AI and for the development of technologies in the Group?
“The Intesa Sanpaolo Group has always been committed to promote the digitalisation of the banking system, with a view to effectively responding to the needs of all categories of customers. Even in the 2022-2025 Business Plan, digital represents an enabling factor and this is demonstrated by the huge investments allocated, equal to 5 billion euros, in order to complete the digital transformation of the Group and offer customers increasingly innovative services, through platforms advanced multi-channel.
The Group is at the forefront in the implementation and development of these activities, with the aim of providing a further acceleration that guarantees the banking system the competitiveness necessary to best face the challenges of the Fintech world.
Intesa Sanpaolo has the ambition to play a leading role among international banking players who consider innovation one of the most important levers for competitive development.
The 5 billion for the digital transformation of the Group envisaged in the 2022-25 Business Plan, including the 650 million intended for the creation of the new digital bank Isybank, have been invested to create a more efficient platform with which to achieve a structural cut in operating costs equal to cost savings of approximately 800 million euros per year starting from 2026."
What does it mean that people are and will always be at the center of Intesa Sanpaolo's technological policy?
“For the bank, AI brings benefits, but also points of attention, for which it is necessary to equip itself with tools capable of guaranteeingcorrect use of data, make the models used fair and govern risk management. To adequately manage the risks of new technologies and also to comply with the Artificial Intelligence Act of the European Union, it was necessary to build a dedicated structure that provides for the classification of risks, the measurement of data quality, the use of Explainable techniques AI that makes the decision-making suggestions provided by AI transparent and comprehensible, the adoption of Fairness controls to protect the right to non-discrimination and, last but not least, maximum attention to human oversight, to guarantee human control of the process and the result.
Intesa Sanpaolo has therefore equipped itself, even in advance of the approval of the AI Act, with one internal regulation on AI and a series of processes and safeguards to guarantee the safe and responsible use of AI. In the design, implementation and use of new technologies, including AI, Intesa Sanpaolo always takes the human factor into consideration, to guarantee careful control, maximum safety and use, both by the Group's people and of customers, simple and effective, in order to calmly seize the great opportunities offered by digital.
The use of AI solutions and large quantities of data is increasingly establishing itself in the world of work and in our business landscape as a key to transformation and simplification. For this reason it is essential to adopt an approach that sees man at the center of projects and processes. This approach gives priority to the needs of people in the company organisation, proposes the use of technology to support and enhance professional skills and creates a more efficient and effective working environment, in which people participate in the design of new solutions and new processes and are trained in the use of new technologies, thus contributing to the evolution of the way of working in this new era.
Companies and institutions must do it training promoters which is useful to those who work in the company today and to the new generations to learn the skills necessary in the new world".
In concrete terms, what will the massive adoption of AI change for Intesa Sanpaolo customers?
“AI has already entered a long time ago service of our customers. Let's think, for example, of the Ellis virtual assistant, which was recently awarded as the best in Europe, or of the cybersecurity front, where AI has allowed us to reduce online fraud by 80 times compared to 2020, analyzing and processing large quantity of data in real time and supporting the proactive identification of behavioral anomalies and new attack patterns by fraudsters and hackers.
Our important investments in AI already allow us now and will increasingly allow us in the future to offer increasingly personalized, effective and safe solutions to our customers. If responsibly adopted, AI strongly contributes to providing better services to customers and more efficient processes on which the Group's structures can leverage for their operations".
Intesa Sanpaolo has already created the first entirely digital bank, Isybank, for customers who don't go to the bank and has an app that is considered among the best on the market: what will the next objectives of the bank's technological strategy be?
“To make AI's contribution even more effective in achieving the objectives of the Business Plan and further strengthen collaboration between all business and government functions, we have launched the AIxelaration project.
Thanks to this approach, the Group is enhancing its data assets and creating AI solutions in industrial logic, adopting a systematic, organized and repeatable approach, to guarantee the efficiency, effectiveness and scalability of its solutions.
With AIxeleration the Group is managing the sAI development ensuring a responsible governance model. The program today has a portfolio of 190 use cases, 50% of which have already started the implementation process or are starting production activities.
Experiments on Large Language Models and Generative AI models were first started and then carefully selected the use cases to be launched on a large scale. This allowed us to measure benefits, costs and risks and to design taking care of the accuracy aspects of the solutions.
We will use Generative AI in a conscious and controlled manner, i.e. the ability to create new data, content and AI solutions, through advanced deep learning techniques, such as generative neural networks, which allow the generation of images, texts, sounds and realistic and personalized videos.
We have given ourselves a“future-proof” technological architecture, which makes us flexible with respect to continuous innovation and big players, i.e. large technology companies that offer advanced and competitive AI solutions and services, adopting a series of responsible principles and solutions: modularity, designing and creating AI composed of independent and interchangeable modules, which can be easily integrated, updated and replaced; scalability, adapting your AI solutions to variations in supply and demand, both in terms of volume and speed, without compromising performance and quality; interoperability, communicating and exchanging data and services with other AI solutions and platforms, both internal and external, in a secure, simple and standardized way; openness, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by open source, open data and open innovation, to access quality and low-cost AI resources, knowledge and solutions; collaboration, establishing and maintaining partnership and alliance relationships with big players, to integrate and enrich their AI solutions with those offered by market leaders, in a complementary and synergistic way".
Maximus Proverb (Krugersdorp – South Africa, 1958) is Chief Data, AI and Technology Officer of Intesa Sanpaolo.
After graduating in Engineering from the Polytechnic of Milan, in 1985 he joined IBM in the role of system engineer. In 1988 he joined Accenture Italia as project manager in the banking sector, branch area. From 1991 to 1994 he moved abroad with Accenture and worked in Belgium, Hungary and South Africa where he managed information systems architecture projects, IT transformation and merger project planning. From 1994 to 1999 he returned to Accenture Italia and followed, again in the banking sector, planning and integration projects for the main Italian banking groups as well as cost reduction projects and the creation of multi-channel solutions and core banking systems. In 1999 he was elected Partner of Accenture.
Since 1999 he has taken responsibility for several Accenture clients and leads the development of several areas of Accenture's offerings including Merger and Acquisition, Digital Transformation and CRM, Cost Restructuring. Since 2003 he has added to these responsibilities the role of Head of the Banking sector in Italy (offer, quality of service, customer satisfaction). In 2007 he became responsible for Accenture for the Financial Services sector (Banks and Insurance) in Italy, Central Europe, Russia, Greece, Turkey and the Middle East and joined the Executive Committee of Accenture Italy and Accenture Financial Service Europe and Latin America. In 2012 he became Senior Managing Director of Accenture and was also assigned the roles of head of Accenture's Payments offering at a global level and then, in 2015, head of Industry and Practice Banking for Europe and Latin America. In December 2017 he left Accenture and on 1 January 2018 he joined Intesa Sanpaolo with the role of Chief IT Digital and Innovation Officer. From March 2023 he becomes Chief Data, AI, Innovation and Technology Officer; in this role he works by strengthening the data functions and in continuity with the previous role. From April 2024 he continues the role with the title of Chief Data, AI and Technology Officer.
He was a Board Member of: Intesa Sanpaolo Group Services (2018-2019), Neva Finventures SpA (2018-2020) and Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center SpA (2018-2021). He was part of the Advisory Committee for Digital PA for the Italian Government (April 2021-September 2022).
In March 2020 he was appointed Board Member of Neva SGR SpA, in July 2020 he received the position of Board Member of ABI. In January 2021 he became a member of the Supervisory Board of Intesa Sanpaolo International Value Services. In March 2022 he was appointed Board Member of the CENTAI Institute SpA Company, in May Board Member of Anti Financial Crime Digital Hub Scarl and in June he became a Member of the Technical-Scientific Committee of the National Cybersecurity Agency.
