Northwest Bancshares Brings KeyBank's AI Discipline to Regional Finance Operations

Regional bank finance leaders are adopting transformation strategies developed at much larger institutions. KeyBank National Association stands out as a source of these methodologies, particularly around the question of which artificial intelligence initiatives warrant expansion. At Northwest Bancshares Inc., this approach took root when the company's chief financial officer brought experience from his previous role managing technology decisions at a national bank.

Doug Schosser, chief financial officer of Northwest Bancshares, carried forward partnerships with software vendors from his time at KeyBank. Workiva Inc., which featured AI governance prominently at its Amplify event, represents one such continuity. Schosser discussed the company's finance transformation and responsible artificial intelligence adoption during an exclusive interview at Amplify, speaking with theCUBE's Krista Case and co-host Alison Kosik.

Applying KeyBank's Framework to a Smaller Organization

Schosser evaluates artificial intelligence proposals using three criteria: impact on customers, gains in internal operations and mitigation of risk. In July, Workiva introduced specialized artificial intelligence agents and an intelligence layer designed for critical reporting functions. The pace of tool development, however, has outstripped the governance structures meant to manage them, Schosser noted.

We think about hiring a junior analyst and having a lot of oversight over that person early on in their job. For whatever reason, we don't think about technology that way, but I'm thinking they are doing similar tasks with similar data.

Doug Schosser

Data quality and curation form the foundation of any artificial intelligence initiative, according to Schosser, who characterized the undertaking as a large coordination challenge involving finance, information technology and operational divisions. The same deliberative approach determines which systems merit adoption during the transition.

Just layering on a new tool on top of bad process is never a particularly good answer. It may just lead you to automating something that's not very efficient or that's creating friction on its own.

Doug Schosser

The reporting system Schosser brought from KeyBank contains an archive of documents spanning years, which he views as training material for artificial intelligence agents to learn routine financial tasks. The real benefit, in his assessment, emerges in how human judgment gets deployed afterward.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/s3OQOEXJyys?feature=oembed

I think technology amplifies your ability to do things more quickly. That way you can get your human workforce to really do what they're best at, which is probably still detailed explanations and helping connect the dots.

Doug Schosser