As financial services leaders begin to dabble with generative AI, they should calculate how “superhumanizing” staff in different divisions could lead to the greatest return on investment. 

There’s a staggering number of potential uses cases for generative AI, so execs need to be strategic about what they prioritize.  

At a recent conference, Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti discussed his own mental model for deciding where to apply the technology within the bank.  

“Think about ‘superhumanizing’ your top people: They could be 10-20% more efficient in terms of the companies that they cover, the clients that they cover, the strategies that they come up with,” Argenti said at the FinTech Nexus event, according to Insider. “Then you can price that amplification, and that will give you a bit of an idea of the return on investment, and that in turn will allow you to prioritize where to invest.” 

It’s crucial to be strategic about which GenAI use cases to pursue, in part because the technology is already proving to be expensive.  

“Here’s a moment where every company and every CEO and every CIO needs to go through that mental model,” Argenti said, and calculate “who to superhumanize to get the highest yield.”  

As FinServs have learned with previous technologies, cost transparency and planning are key to successful transformations, and the sooner that firms start thinking about the ROI of GenAI, the sooner they can get it out of internal research labs and into production. 

Goldman itself has started giving its engineers access to GenAI to write code, and using it for data management, with the goal of spreading institutional knowledge. For other examples of how financial firms are putting generative AI to the test, check out Insights Distilled’s past coverage. And if you have heard about an interesting FinServ use case that we haven’t covered yet, reach out and let us know.