A couple of years after its initial boom, artificial intelligence (AI) still remains a huge buzzword in the fintech industry, as every firm looks at a new way of integrating the tech into its infrastructure to gain a competitive edge. Exploring how they are going about doing this in 2025, The Fintech Times is spotlighting some of the biggest themes in AI this February.
The fintech industry is constantly bringing new ideas to the fore that have the potential to take off. While some are more successful than others, one indisputable success has been AI. Organisations across every fintech subsector are now implementing the technology both in back-office and front-office operations. Having explored how AI is impacting customer interactions, we now turn our attention to back-office operations and how AI is improving it.
Analysing real-time financial data
Rob Israch, president, Tipalti,
For Rob Israch, president, Tipalti, the firm automating finances, there are two primary ways in which fintech and AI have joined forces to improve the industry: quicker data analysis and better compliance. He explains: “AI has become a competitive differentiator for finance teams, transforming back-office operations.
“One of the biggest breakthroughs is its ability to analyse real-time financial data, enabling teams to detect patterns and risks far more effectively. Nearly four-fifths of UK finance professionals see this as a game-changer for strategic decision-making and risk modelling.
“AI-powered tools that learn from documents, adapt to invoice variations and auto-code invoices have also had a major impact. Digital assistants now give finance teams instant access to critical data, enabling faster, smarter decision-making.
“With ever-changing UK and EU regulations and rising fraud risks, compliance-focused fintech solutions have been equally transformative. AI-driven automation software detects anomalies in invoice patterns and behaviours, flagging any potentially fraudulent activities, and sending real-time alerts. Meanwhile, automated tax compliance technology ensures that invoices adhere to laws and internal financial policies by automatically checking invoices for accuracy and adherence to regulations.
“Fintech innovations are not just streamlining back-office operations – they’re reshaping the future of finance.”
AI in alternative investment
Raphaelle Granger, head of product strategy, asset owners Americas, Northern Trust
According to Raphaelle Granger, head of product strategy, asset owners Americas, Northern Trust, the provider of asset servicing and related services, AI can be used revolutionise alternative asset investing.
“While machine learning has automated many custody functions over the past decade, the most dramatic technological change is occurring in the alternatives space. Operations for private markets are mostly manual, lacking industry formats and methods of sharing data. Asset owners and their providers are often left to manually aggregate a view of an alternative investment portfolio. With the growth of alternative assets in institutional portfolios and the retailisation of the asset class, a myriad of innovative fintech solutions has emerged to resolve this challenge.
“Artificial intelligence is now more commonly used to extract alternative investment data from multiple sources and integrate it into existing workstreams. This is a game-changer for institutional investors as they continue to allocate assets to private markets. Generative AI can go beyond processing to provide enhanced investment oversight, supporting investment teams in the front office as well. This will be part of the evolution of the NT Digitizer, a proprietary tool we developed for the alternative markets.
“With a greater commitment by asset owners to alternative investments comes the need for a more complete understanding of the performance, risk exposure and liquidity of such holdings. Emerging technologies makes this easier, facilitating a revolution in alternative asset investing.”
Better fraud detection and invoice automation
Angus Milledge, head of new business SMB EMEA, SAP Concur
Cashflow is crucial for an organisation to survive. Angus Milledge, head of new business SMB EMEA, SAP Concur, the integrated travel, expense, and invoice management solutions provider, notes that with the use of AI, cashflow can be improved by stopping things that would have hindered it before: fraud and late invoices.
“Fintech innovations such as AI-driven fraud detection and automated invoicing have notably improved back-office operations by improving efficiency and cost savings. While teams spend much of their time on manual, error-prone data entry and managing approvals, these tasks are time-consuming and difficult.
“By streamlining routine tasks, organisations can eliminate the bottlenecks slowing down operations and promptly detect potential risks. Automating manual tasks can also create integrations to smooth the flow of data and approvals, enabling employees to focus on strategic and complex activities. The result is increased productivity, improved operational efficiency, and the ability to make more informed decisions- ultimately leading to better financial outcomes.”
Simplifying third-party interactions
Isabelle Granahan-Field, investor at Camber Creek
Working with other organisations can be challenging. Timings can be knocked off schedule very easily, however, for Isabelle Granahan-Field, investor at Camber Creek, the venture capial firm, this is where AI can step in.
“Back-office operations are a natural target for increased automation because many of the processes they touch are discrete, structured, and repetitive. In other words, it’s easy to envision how you can teach computers to assist with them. One way to structure some of what we’re seeing is by walking through the life cycle of a purchase with a third-party vendor.
“First, there are legal and document intelligence tools that can speed up diligence processes, negotiate standard and compliant terms, and reduce human error.
“Second is procurement and vendor management. AI streamlines vendor selection, contract management, and performance tracking. This leads to cost savings and improved supplier relationships.
“Third is invoicing and accounts payable. Automation of invoice coding and processing reduces manual tasks, increases accuracy, and enhances data sets for strategic forecasting and budgeting.
“And lastly, after vendors are paid, is what an enterprise does with cash on hand, i.e., treasury and cash management, which can be a real thicket across hundreds of financial entities and accounts. AI-optimised platforms are replacing expensive, manual approaches.
“Onboarding new systems and aligning people and software so that they reinforce one another can take time. That is a real change management process. But the upsides are undeniable, and potential cost savings only increase as labor costs continue to rise.”
‘Zero operations’
Brian DeWyer, BSME, MBA, CTO and founder at Reveille Software
When it comes to simplifying back-office operations, Brian DeWyer, BSME, MBA, CTO and founder at Reveille Software, a firm tracking and reporting the health of business-critical systems, explains that AI is enabling firms to completely alleviate resources in a certain area, leading to a ‘zero operations’ mindset.
“Robotic process automation (RPA) has delivered automation around performing repetitive, rules-based activities and tasks across financial systems and processes. RPA automation has expanded into intelligent document processing (IDP) leveraging a no code / low code design approach to intelligently process unstructured documents and data utilising machine learning (ML) models.
“Further advancements have extended IDP to use large language models (LLMs) and generative AI (GenAI) to further comprehend data, deliver insight, and perform the next best action.
“The use of artificial intelligence (AI) for back-office operations has turned applications into smart processes with enhanced knowledge of data even before a human has gotten involved. Advancements with specialised large language models (LLMs) improved by Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) guardrails are sophisticated enough to detect fraud in real time to protect customers.
“Fintech organistions taking an ‘AI-first’ approach are finding greater operational efficiency through a ‘zero operations” mindset, thus augmenting human decisions with AI agents.”
Speed is giving firms a competitive edge
Ariege Misherghi SVP & GM of Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and Accountant Channel at BILL
Once seen as cost centers, AI is redefining this perception by connecting critical capabilities, explains Ariege Misherghi, SVP and GM of accounts payable, accounts receivable and accountant channel at BILL, accounts payable automation services provider. She notes that AI is eliminating cumbersome data silos, turning data into insights and empowering back-office teams to make informed decisions on everything from procurement to payables, receivables to reconciliation.
“Here are a few examples that excite me most
AI-powered accounts payable and receivable: Automated invoice processing, payment matching, and fraud detection to streamline workflows and cut costs.
Smart reconciliation and real-time ledger management: AI-driven tools can eliminate manual reconciliation, accelerate month-end close, and provide real-time financial visibility.
Cloud-based financial operations and predictive analytics: Unified financial data and AI-powered forecasting help optimise cash flow and anticipate financial trends.
“Fintech isn’t just automating tasks; it’s making finance teams faster, smarter, and more strategic, giving companies a competitive edge.”
Digital employee experience
Dominic Mensah, strategic accounts, Lakeside Software the firm optimising digital environments explores how the digital employee experience (DEX) has been accelerated by AI, helping firms save thousands, if not millions, while ensuring the same quality of offering is put out.
“While not limited to fintech, innovations in the digital employee experience, or DEX, have impacted fintech back-office operations the most. DEX is not a new idea; it simply describes how end users (either employees or customers) interact with IT devices. But with advances in data analytics and AI/ML, the impact of DEX can be massive.
“To deliver the best DEX, fintech organisations need high-quality breadth, depth, and history of data from their entire IT estate. This data offers complete visibility so the back-office IT teams know what hardware, software, networks, systems, and devices are running in the digital environment at any given time.
“Once IT teams have that visibility, they can identify problem areas to boost productivity, efficiencies, and cost savings. For example, one financial institution identified unused software licenses across the enterprise. By cancelling the unused licenses, it saved over £3.4million.
“Another US-based bank planned a hardware refresh cycle of 7,000 laptops each year.By evaluating usage patterns and machine stresses, the IT team determined that only 600 laptops needed replacing that year, significantly extending the device lifespan.”
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