Dear Members:

Have you ever hesitated to adopt new technology, fearing the learning curve and leaving your comfort zone? In the financial industry, where stability is key, it’s tempting to stick with traditional methods. However, sometimes a breakthrough technology emerges—like Generative AI (GenAI)—that compels us to reconsider. You’ve probably already encountered some form of AI in your personal life—from voice assistants to personalized recommendations—but have you thought about how AI could transform the way you work?

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how useful it’s been to me in some of my daily business tasks. As you probably know, GenAI specializes in language-based tasks like generating text, summarizing, translating, and answering questions. I recently put it to the test while reviewing a complex business contract filled with legal jargon. I asked (prompted) my GenAI tool to explain the contract's content to me like I was in 5th grade. I was amazed at the clarity of the answers and how much time was saved by not having to research each concept separately. I wouldn’t have received this helpful insight, though, unless I had given it a try.

Corporate One’s Position on GenAI in the Workplace 

To ensure we can take advantage of the benefits of GenAI while mitigating potential risks, all staff are permitted to use GenAI within specific guidelines. Corporate One’s policy includes the following best practices: 

• Never upload or share with GenAI any confidential information. Confidential information includes, but is not limited to, any employee information, member information, including payment information. This includes any information about our members or our member’s member.  
• Never upload or share with GenAI any intellectual property. Intellectual property includes, but is not limited to, Corporate One’s strategic plan, source code for development or production, or source code for testing or quality assurance purposes.  
• Validate the accuracy and completeness of GenAI outputs prior to business use. GenAI is still an emerging technology and, as such, GenAI has shown to generate errors or inaccuracies. Employees using output of GenAI to provide context, facts or general information in business communications, contracts, policies, procedures, and other forms of communication are accountable to validate the accuracy and completeness of those statements. 
• Understand and comply with the usage rights of GenAI outputs prior to business use. Each GenAI application treats its outputs differently. For example, Chat GPT states in its Terms of Use that it does not own the content it generates. Others may have different terms. It is the user’s responsibility to ensure that no copyright infringement occurs when using GenAI outputs.  

The best uses our IT and HR teams have found so far for GenAI are the following: 

• Data synthesis. We created two chatbots to help us look up and identify information faster within the hundreds of internal policies, procedures, and other documentation we possess.  
• Call recording and transcription. Where it previously took staff members a full week to manually transcribe and generate meeting notes, we can now both record the meeting and generate and distribute notes the same day.

Regarding specific GenAI tools, Corporate One uses Microsoft Copilot exclusively because of its automatic integration within the Microsoft Office suite of applications, which we already use, and the security embedded within it. And although no formal staff training on employee use of GenAI has been conducted yet, our HR team leads a monthly Copilot workgroup where users review use cases and discuss how to craft prompts to get better results.  

Exploring GenAI in Payments

Although achieving alignment on implementing GenAI in the larger workplace is ongoing in our industry, I suggest at least giving it a try with some basic tasks if you haven’t already. For a more comprehensive look at AI’s impact on financial services—especially in payments—I highly recommend watching “Understanding GenAI and Payments.” This presentation was featured in Corporate One’s inaugural virtual conference, CU Forward, and it explores the evolution of AI and its positive contributions to the financial industry through seamless transactions, fraud detection, and personalized experiences. The potential downsides of AI, such as data security vulnerabilities, algorithmic biases, and the risk of malicious misuse, are also candidly discussed. I highly recommend watching the on-demand version to understand this topic better.

The world of AI is evolving rapidly, and we should keep exploring, experimenting, and learning about new capabilities. I believe that technology should serve as an ally to business, and now is the perfect time to experience how GenAI can enhance your personal and professional responsibilities. 

Best,