Fintech entrepreneur Dr Ozan Ozerk joined the 'Utilising AI in Fintech' panel at the Qatar Web Summit 2024. During the session, Dr Ozerk and co-panellist Edward Achtner, Head of AI at HSBC, exchanged thoughts on how AI is likely to impact the way fintechs think and operate. The summit, a key event for business leaders worldwide, was held in Doha on February 26-29 and featured over 300 speakers and panellists.

Dr Ozan Ozerk, a globally renowned figure in fintech, is the founder of Openpayd (a banking-as-a-service provider based in the UK), European Merchant Bank (EMBank), and e-money institution Ozan Electronic Money (Ozan Elektronik Para), Turkiye’s innovative payment service provider for businesses.

In response to a question in the panel about the areas of fintech where AI can be most helpful, Dr. Ozan Ozerk pointed to customer onboarding, handling compliance and risk, and transaction monitoring. AI makes scalable growth achievable here, as opposed to a serious barrier for fintechs. Fintechs can meet the substantial workload demands of client acquisition by using AI, either through AI-powered service providers or internally, to speed up processing and reduce the risk of human or algorithmic errors.

Ozan Ozerk was confident, with a caveat, about how AI could be helpful with managing money better and more safely. He stated that “AI should and would successfully help guide us to the right financial products and improve trading decisions, decreasing the burden of individually processing a load of information along the way.” 

Yet he alerted the audience to how inclusive the process would be. Financial institutions are regulated to have cutting-edge cybersecurity and effectively apply KYC/AML processes. However, AI usage could further erode service inclusivity if it were not handled delicately. Ozerk recognised the threat posed by criminal organisations or individuals that abuse AI but was also concerned about a widening gap in access, where “basically people might be left out just because a robot told you they should not be banking with you.”

Dr Ozan Ozerk noted that to deliver AI's full benefits to customers, all the links in the chain must be connected in terms of institutions and their technology. In international payments, various parties rely on each other to move money or assets across borders and institutions. As AI is used increasingly, companies that do not utilise AI may become bottlenecks. 

As for the expected changes in the workforce and talent pool that the extended use of AI would impose on fintechs, Dr Ozan Ozerk felt confident from a historical perspective that society would successfully adapt to them. He believes AI will be a big player for a lot of the manual work being delegated to technology. More employees will take on tasks governing and utilising AI, performing new professions, occupying new positions within each company, and performing new societal roles at large. AI may be especially useful to companies in countries with declining populations to help keep their competitive edge. 

Ozan Ozerk explained the challenges of pioneering AI in financial services: AI is still in its early phase, industry regulation is not precise, and the technology is yet unproven in many aspects. Ozerk’s approach in their own organisation is not to “break things and move on” but to constantly review the AI practices in non-regulated sectors and selectively apply them to fintech. 

Dr. Ozerk expressed his excitement about the future potential of AI and technology to level the playing field between big, long-established financial institutions and younger contenders in the eyes of retail clients. Five years on, he is curious to see how clients will choose financial services—if the ones with the best engines, robots, or algorithms will win them over. He expects the older and younger institutions to face off in an even more challenging way than today.

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