A survey conducted by ORX, involving some of the largest banks and insurance companies worldwide, reveals that almost half are using at least one mainstream Generative AI tool to enhance their risk management strategies. An equal proportion of firms are planning to implement operational risk applications using large language models within the next 18 months.

The study, conducted amongst a small sample of 42 major financial firms, highlights a positive shift towards digital, data-driven risk management, with companies recognising the benefits of GenAI. According to the survey, the most significant advantage of GenAI lies in its ability to enhance employee productivity.

Helen L’Abbate, deputy director of research and information at ORX, commented: “It is encouraging to see firms embracing GenAI as a supportive tool in human decision-making and using it to create opportunities for connecting datasets in second-line functions.

“We are seeing firms use it to support knowledge discovery, drafting code and documents and to significantly enhance decision-making in areas like risk frameworks and taxonomies, as well as improving efficiency and response times to policy inquiries.”

Firms now view data as a key building block for successful risk management, with almost all stating that they have centralised, or are in the process of centralising, their operational and non-financial risk-relevant data and pipelines to support their plans – typically at firm, group or enterprise risk level.

The most popular GenAI assistant tool remains OpenAI’s ChatGPT, used by over a third of those surveyed, followed by Microsoft Copilot. Other tools, such as Google Gemini, Amazon Q and Mistral, are less widely used but are often employed for quality assurance of internal documents and code assistance.

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