Q&A: AI will automate many roles in the IB/PE world. A live Q&A with Arctic, who are recruiting finance professionals to help manage that change
At Arctic, we have been working with firms in the Financial Services sector over the past six years to implement Artificial Intelligence into their toolkit. As we are rapidly growing across the Americas and actively recruiting regional GMs, we wanted to host a Q&A session to address the common questions.
Early adopters of AI are now leading the way with functioning systems to expand their deal origination and due diligence operations. These firms are using these tools to ingest larger amounts of structured and unstructured data and output standardized reports within minutes. These systems are currently able to automate approximately 50% of these functions and are improving with every day of usage. What does this mean for the future of the Analyst role? With this competitive advantage, how will firms who are late adopters of this technology going to fare? Are there certain tasks that AI just cannot do as well as we can?
Firms are also funding the implementation of AI solutions in their portfolio companies to increase the exit valuations of their investments. Solutions involving market monitoring, sales optimization, computer vision, automation and operational efficiency are leading the way in value creation at portfolio company level. How successful and mature are these solutions and how can the buyside think about them for their portfolio?
These are the questions we answer at Arctic AI and the solutions we build. We have open roles for P&L-owning VPs in various cities across the USA, Canada and Europe. We are targeting individuals with experience in IB and PE, who are keen to help design and consult on AI solutions for the same clientele.
We are here to answer any and all questions – how these solutions work, what kinds of firms can profit most from them, as well as the roles that are available at Arctic!
Just to start things off:
Great questions!
1. We do build very customized solutions but generally, we use AI to perform research and market analysis for deal origination (AI finds and ranks companies according to a fund's investment hypothesis or an IB's market focus, in simple terms), to automate due diligence (creating dealsheets, pulling data from DRs and analyzing it, etc) and to automate processes at portfolio companies to expand margins. Super custom so lots of varied case studies here!
2. This is absolutely right - that's why we always build IP for our clients. We aim never to keep the IP to the AI models we build, essentially. We even work, on occasion, with on-premise servers, such is the sensitivity of some data. We are big believers that AI companies who sell in off-the-shelf products are only suitable for a small number of generic tasks. Other businesses with valuable proprietary data - including the training their professionals can give the AI - need to keep hold of the IP to the AI that data can build.
3. VPs sit on our global exec team and are responsible for generating revenue by pitching AI technologies to PE and IB, consulting them to a great solution, and liaising between them and our technical Hub to represent the client as we build out solutions. Most clients then go on to ask for multiple phases of work to iterate on the solution in question. Depending on revenue growth, there's a great opportunity to build out a client-facing consultancy team.
Thanks for these great questions!