OP FINANCIAL GROUP
How to scale an AI initiative in a highly regulated environment?
AI AND DATA SCIENCE AT OP FINANCIAL GROUP
OP Financial Group is Finland’s largest financial services group. Their AI journey began in the 1980s with the first expert systems. In 2021, the company kicked off a Citizen Data Science program. The program includes training, events, and the launch of OP’s Data Platform for data productization. The program has grown significantly to this day, involving an engaged community of hundreds of active data scientists and numerous project teams within the Financial Group.
OP’s structured approach to scaling AI amidst stringent regulations highlights the importance of strategic planning, rigorous compliance measures, and community engagement. By leveraging secure AI applications and fostering a culture of responsible AI use, OP is able to innovate while maintaining regulatory integrity.
SAFE USE OF GENERATIVE AI WITH A TAILORED CHATGPT SOLUTION
In 2023, together with Sevendos company AI Roots, OP developed a custom ChatGPT application, Maiju, to enable OP employees to safely utilize AI for various tasks without compromising data security. The key benefits of Maiju include secure interaction via Azure OpenAI, ensuring OP retains data ownership, and reducing the risk associated with employees using AI services that have not been officially approved or vetted.
Naturally, Maiju is also saving time and improving operational efficiency within OP Group. Currently, 15% (1900) of OP employees are monthly users of Maiju.
STANDARD USE CASES OF MAIJU
generating text content
such as news or announcements
Producing summaries, analyses, and synopses
of different text content, such as news or system logs
Translating text
from one language to another
Learning aid
providing answers and explanations to questions about text content or program code
Converting program code
for example, translating old program code into the required format of new software platforms or converting natural language to SQL
Documenting program code
for example, explaining the functionality of a specific program code or creating technical documents based on the code
Improving software development
by providing solutions for producing specific program code or explaining errors
CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS IN A REGULATED ENVIRONMENT
Regulatory compliance, particularly with GDPR and the upcoming AI Act, demands extensive management and training. OP emphasizes certain analytics and product management best practices:
- Use-case-driven practices
- Rigorous data quality monitoring
- Up-to-date cybersecurity practices
- Careful documentation of data and testing practices
- Emphasis on AI model robustness
OP Financial Group sees that the key to scalability is establishing federated authority to prevent bottlenecks and creating 'round tables' for efficient escalation of issues. Dangers are created by lack of legal practices and unclear interpretation of legal text. But on the other side of the scale, over-conservative interpretation of legalities propose a different kind of risk to scalability.
THREAT MODELING AND EMPLOYEE TRAINING ENSURE SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION
OP applications must fulfill up to 25+ requirement sets from reliability, accessibility, and cybersecurity to usability and performance.
In the development phase, a transition was made from the initial hybrid AWS + Azure to a native Azure application together with Sevendos experts. Microsoft’s cooperation with OpenAI ensures that most of the legal, security, and privacy concerns are covered by existing contracts.
Productization started after the summer holidays and the solution was published before the end of the year, including mandatory training for responsible AI use.