Alteryx recently hosted three Data & AI Roadshow for Financial Services events in Toronto, Charlotte, and New York City. More than 150 professionals from leading banks, insurers, fintechs, and credit unions came together to talk about the realities of advancing data and AI in financial services.
The sessions were led by Jawwad Rasheed, Finance and Financial Services Transformation Lead at Alteryx, who guided roundtable discussions and customer panels featuring voices from organizations including CIBC, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Nuveen, and LPL Financial.
The common thread: Strengthening data foundations
Across all three cities, the conversation kept coming back to one theme: data maturity must evolve before AI can deliver its full value.
Participants shared that many initiatives are still in the foundational stage. They are focused on improving data quality, access, and governance while ensuring compliance and security remain intact. Several leaders described balancing innovation with oversight, recognizing that governance and agility are not opposing forces but partners in sustainable modernization.
Recent advances in AI have only amplified the urgency to strengthen data foundations, exposing weaknesses in governance frameworks, including including data quality, ownership, lineage, controls, and privacy.
As one participant put it, “AI won’t take our jobs, but people who know how to use AI best might.” Building AI literacy is now as critical as managing data pipelines.
Challenges that resonate across the industry
While each organization’s priorities differed, many of the same challenges surfaced:
- Integrating data from disparate systems
- Managing access and ownership across business units
- Keeping up with the pace of change and upskilling teams
- Demonstrating tangible ROI from AI investments
- Overcoming resistance to new tools and approaches
- Operating in a highly regulated environment that heightens risk sensitivity and slows innovation
- Defining the right operating model to democratize AI safely and effectively
Attendees noted that these challenges are not unique to any single institution. Every organization is navigating the same growing pains as they move from experimentation to enterprise-scale AI adoption.
Where the opportunities are emerging
Despite the hurdles, participants were optimistic about where AI can make a measurable impact. The most discussed opportunities included:
- Automating tasks such as invoice processing and anomaly detection
- Using AI for better forecasting and financial reporting
- Applying analytics to ESG and sustainability data
- Creating stronger links between tax, finance, and risk data for faster decision-making
Other emerging applications include the use of large language models (LLMs) for policy and compliance assessments. For example, interpreting complex jurisdictional tax laws to assess compliance against both local and group submissions. AI is also being used to auto-correct material exceptions surfaced through account reconciliations, either self-certified or routed to a human-in-the-loop for approval.
Some teams are further exploring LLMs and natural language interfaces to accelerate analysis and reduce manual reporting cycles. Others are holding internal hackathons to experiment with GenAI use cases safely and collaboratively.
How Alteryx empowers data, analytics, and AI in financial services
As financial institutions work to strengthen their data foundations and responsibly scale AI, many are turning to Alteryx to accelerate progress. The platform enables banks, insurers, and investment firms to automate manual processes, reduce operational risk, and unlock new insights, without compromising governance or control.
Financial organizations worldwide are using Alteryx to:
- Automate complex, high-volume processes such as reconciliations, KYC reviews, and regulatory reporting—reducing manual workloads and human error
- Enhance transparency and auditability with traceable, end-to-end workflows that satisfy internal audit and external regulatory requirements
- Accelerate AI experimentation by creating governed sandboxes that allow analysts to explore use cases safely and collaboratively
- Connect data silos across finance, risk, operations, and compliance to generate unified insights that drive faster, more confident decisions
By combining automation, governance, and AI enablement in a single, cohesive platform, Alteryx empowers financial institutions to modernize with confidence — turning the promise of AI into measurable performance gains and sustainable risk reduction.
Looking Ahead
The Alteryx Data & AI Roadshow demonstrated that the financial services industry is entering a new phase of data maturity. Leaders are looking beyond proofs of concept and focusing on how to scale responsibly, measure value, and empower their people.