Is the insolvency industry ready for AI, ChatGPT and Automation?
Turnkey Exchange
Join Mark Simpson for the first ever episode of the Turnkey Exchange Podcast where his guests will be discussing the use of AI, ChatGPT and Automation within the Insolvency Industry.
AI, ChatGPT and Automation are hailed as the latest technologies set to disrupt the way we work but is the insolvency industry really ready for this level of innovation?
In the premier episode of the Turnkey Exchange, our host, Mark Simpson, is joined by Darren White, Greg Clough and Stephen Hunt for the first installment of a 3-part mini series. In this episode, Mark encourages our guests to share their thoughts and experiences in using these new technologies. Future episodes will cover topics such as the rise of remote working as well as a discussions on how the Creditor Portal should be evolved to better support clients.
Meet Our Speakers
Throughout the episode, our guests explore the potential applications of AI, ChatGPT and Automation within insolvency and discuss their views and concerns on the impact these technologies will have on the industry as a whole.
From their discussion, it’s clear that there are endless opportunities for AI within insolvency and Darren raises an interesting point – will this open up the possibility of the regulators implementing AI policies?
Moving on from AI, they discuss how far technology has come from firms using Excel Macros to automate tasks to the new world of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) where firms are now automating the complete onboarding of new work and much more. Taking what was once an expensive and labour-intensive process and making it more efficient. But are Insolvency Practitioners really ready to embrace this change?
By automating these repetitive processes, people often question whether it will lead to redundancies however Darren poses an alternative point of view where automation frees up staff time to focus on more important, interesting tasks that are also more beneficial to firms.
Greg raised a valid concern, particularly as younger generations enter the workforce, that firms need to ensure they are still teaching their teams the basics and that they have a solid understanding of how their processes hang together and why things are done in a particular way so as to avoid building in errors which can quickly get out of hand if they solely rely on tools such as ChatGPT and AI.
“When it comes to AI and ChatGPT where you can just ask questions and it does it, it will be interesting to see who eventually actually knows how it all hangs together and that you don’t just build in errors that then just get bigger and bigger because no one actually knows the answers.”
Greg Clough, Head of IT for Insolvency & Restructuring, Alvarez & Marsal
From Darren’s experience, the younger generation of users have very different expectations from software and believes that both firms and the insolvency industry as a whole will need to adapt very quickly to meet these expectations.
“Expecting some of these younger generations to be sitting there entering creditors or putting in information, I think, will very quickly change. Their expectations are going to be quite different so if we can automate and if we can use, as you said, the likes of AI, in some of these processes, that can only be beneficial for the industry as we go forward.”
Darren White, Global Head of Product, Turnkey
Given how new these technologies are, Mark encouraged our guests to share any hesitations or security concerns around using these new tools which prompted Stephen to weigh in with a few cautions for IP’s around using ChatGPT and AI. While the general view amongst the panel was that IPs will be slower to adopt these tools than other professions as they wait for its capabilities and boundaries to be fully understood and tested, Stephen also raised the concern of “homogenization of product” where these tools produce the same output for everyone and firms risk losing what makes them different.
“Just because it’s clever and just because it’s good, doesn’t mean people are going to use it. That’s not because there’s a self interest thing where they want to charge an hourly rate and make more money, its because it doesn’t work beyond the limits of the thing it does. If you want to change that word or translate that phrase, or sentence or table into something else using chatbot then great, but extending it to being influential in how you run your business, it may not be great.”
Stephen Hunt, Partner, Griffins
And that concludes our round up of the key issues covered in the first episode of the Turnkey Exchange. If you haven’t already, you can listen to the full recording on the Turnkey Exchange Hub or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music.
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