Hailing from IIM Bangalore, I interned at Citibank as an investment banker for 2 months. Finance industry in general is perceived to be extremely strenuous; relying severely on human labor. My first corporate experience with GenAI was during my internship itself. During this period, I realized how GenAI like ChatGPT, assists investment bankers in reducing their workload, increasing impact and efficiency simultaneously.
I was staffed on a project to create a company pitch for private placement of an Indian bathware firm. During this project, for the purposes of preparing the industry overview, the analyst working on the project used ChatGPT for generating research reports on Indian bathware industry and its past performance. ChatGPT also collated market commentary regarding the future of this industry. I was surprised at how this saved a lot of time that could have been spent in internet research pertaining to market conditions. ChatGPT also helped in providing auto-document summarization wherein the analyst uploaded 2-3 broker reports commenting on industry projected financials; this assisted him in scanning through these lengthy reports efficiently and gaining significant data at such low time and effort.
Moreover, the use of GenAI did not only limit to the research portion of the pitch, in-fact; it surprisingly extended to the financial or quantitative modelling portion as well. ChatGPT was used to create extreme scenarios and stress test the model under adverse scenarios. This helped to build robustness and made the pitch stronger by accounting for multiple possibilities.
Thus, during the course of these 2 months I realized how generative AI like ChatGPT is so helpful in the day-to-day life of an investment banker. It helps to accelerate tasks and can be used in tandem with the human mind. Investment banking industry is heavily reliant on human mind and touch, since successful client relations are a must; however, tools like these can help relieve them by reducing their burden and increasing the work quality simultaneously.
Hey, thank you for this interesting post. Its interesting to hear about your first hand experience at the company and how they are implementing this exciting new technologies. Im curious about how the discussion in the company were about the uses of AI. Is it totally seen as a positive thing, or are their any fears or concerns around its use. What measures do they take to manage user data to ensure privacy?