What infrastructure and talent investments do you believe will be essential for financial institutions to successfully leverage LLMs at scale?
Simon Thompson, Head of AI, ML and Data Science, GFT This depends on how much of the value creation in financial institutions becomes commoditised and how much value remains in the parts of the processes that can still be a source of differentiation.
If the bulk of a Financial Service Institution’ s( FSI’ s) business process can be commoditised with LLMs, then that FSI should put very little investment into infrastructure and talent to support it.
Instead, the focus must shift to parts of the process that need differentiation. Things like sovereign ownership and information assurance may be what drives this, or it might be possible for FSIs to use their data and skills to outcompete generalist hyperscaler models in specialist areas. As compute grows and LLM technology itself democratises and commoditises, the pendulum could well swing back to the folk who own their own AI.
“Sovereign ownership and information assurance may be what drives the future”
SIMON THOMPSON, HEAD OF AI, ML AND DATA SCIENCE, GFT
Richard Doherty, Wealth & Asset Management Leader at Publicis Sapient To scale LLMs safely and effectively, investment in both infrastructure and talent is critical.
On the infrastructure side, secure data pipelines, scalable model hosting environments and integration layers across business systems are foundational.
These aren’ t nice-to-haves – they’ re the backbone that enables reliable, compliant AI operations at enterprise scale.
On the talent side, it’ s not just about AI engineers; it’ s about bringing together product managers, risk leaders, compliance professionals, and domain experts to co-create solutions.
The most successful AI initiatives require crossfunctional teams that understand both the technology and the business context.
The institutions investing here today are building the muscle they’ ll need to lead tomorrow. This isn’ t just about adopting AI, it’ s about developing the organisational capabilities to innovate responsibly and execute at scale.
132 September 2025