A FICO poll of banking executives across Asia Pacific found that 77 percent consider it extremely important for AI tools used by banks to be built for financial services. The survey, released October 15, points to privacy, regulation and explainability as concerns shaping adoption.

Another 23 percent described specialization as somewhat important, according to the financial analytics company. FICO argued that applications handling credit and fraud decisions face constraints different from those of consumer-facing AI tools.

Asked about the biggest barrier to deploying AI, 42 percent of respondents identified data privacy and security. Regulatory and compliance risks were cited by 21 percent, while another 21 percent selected model transparency and explainability. Computing or infrastructure cost ranked lower at 16 percent.

FICO said more than 60 percent of those surveyed saw fraud and scam detection as the area in which generative AI could deliver the largest operational improvements over the next 12 months.

According to the survey, 26 percent of banking respondents reported that task-specific AI models were already deployed, and another 46 percent anticipated deployment within one to two years. Credit underwriting and lending decisions were selected by 64 percent as a back-office process likely to benefit from industry-specific AI.

Grab Finance expands credit access across Southeast Asia using FICO platform