This year's semester lectures of the Chair of Banking were held under the title "Künstliche Intelligenz in Kreditinstituten" on May 8, 2023 in Münster. Due to the short-notice cancellation of the first speaker, the lectures this time were not exclusively focused on practice, but were supplemented on the chair side by Dr. Johannes Kriebel, who spontaneously stepped in. The two other speakers, Dr. Andreas Totok (Finanz Informatik Solutions Plus GmbH) and Christoph Rabenseifer (Deutsche Bank AG), then contributed their expert knowledge on the use of AI in practice.

An introduction to the topic of AI and its possible applications in the banking and credit industry was given - for a given occasion - directly by ChatGPT itself. Prof. Pfingsten picked up on a current trend from the media and asked the debated chatbot to write a short introduction to the topic - with, as Prof. Pfingsten found, rather average results. Nevertheless, it became clear once again what a central role AI plays for each and every one of us in a wide variety of life situations.

Dr. Johannes Kriebel, who has been a post-doc at the Chair of Banking for some time and has been researching machine learning for several years, reported on an exciting research project to identify fraud in insurance companies. This theory-based project comparing different methods also has a significant practical relevance, as the data basis for the machine learning methods used is actually submitted insurance claims, which were provided by a large insurance company as a cooperation partner of the project.

Dr. Andreas Totok then immersed into practice and spoke about the potentials for AI use in sales and back office processes at S-Finanzgruppe. Particularly with regard to the proximity to customers of the savings banks and in terms of more efficient process design, especially in the service area, artificial intelligence holds great opportunities. AI-supported, direct financing offers in the savings banks' banking app also offer a lot of potential.

Christoph Rabenseifner concluded the series of presentations with insights into artificial intelligence in connection with digital transformation at banks. In particular, he brought into focus the importance of strategic partnerships with tech giants such as Google and NVIDIA in various application areas. Mr. Rabenseifer also highlighted the opportunities presented by the use of artificial intelligence to optimize processes and customer interactions. 

Between the lectures, the “Ludwig Mülhaupt-Preis”, endowed with € 1,000, was once again ceremoniously presented by the Society for the Promotion of the Research Center for Banking Economics at the University of Münster: We warmly congratulate Jan Ihorst, who convinced with his performance in the modules Financial Intermediation I and II and wrote an excellent seminar paper on the topic " Chancen und Risiken einer digitalen Zentralbankwährung " and defended it in the seminar.

With many exciting impressions and new knowledge about the use of AI in credit institutions and with great anticipation for the upcoming “Münsteraner Bankentage” on April 25 and 26, 2024, the Chair of Banking would like to thank all speakers and participants for the very successful ifk semester lectures 2023.