There is a growing demand for data and AI investment across all industries, but especially for financial services firms. Since 2019, data consumption has increased by about 40 per cent annually for LSEG’s customers, according to its CEO David Schwimmer, who spoke alongside Satya Nadella, CEO and chairman of Microsoft, during a live fireside chat on AI trends for LinkedIn in early 2025 in Davos, Switzerland.
Businesses are increasingly investing in AI; driven by both the potential opportunities it provides and the fear of being left behind. Companies are looking to benchmark themselves against competitors and adapt to change. “People want to understand how others in the industry are navigating this [AI] challenge and disruption,” said Schwimmer.
The partnership between LSEG and Microsoft is helping navigate these challenges in the financial markets by equipping the industry with the right tools, solutions and insights, combining LSEG's breadth and depth of trusted data and analytics with Microsoft's global cloud and strong AI capabilities.
AI as a new factor of production
AI is also transforming from a technology that merely enables business processes to one that is having a fundamental influence on worker productivity.
“In the past, companies may have thought of technology or IT as an enabler, but now it’s a new factor of production,” said Nadella. “If you’re a pharmaceutical company, it’s about accelerating science; in financial services, it’s about leveraging knowledge.”
For Nadella, AI adoption is about translating it into meaningful business outcomes. “The need for this new infrastructure, to translate into transformation, is self-evident at this point,” he said.
Challenges with data sovereignty
Industries that have not traditionally focused on AI-driven investments are adopting the technology to stay competitive, according to Schwimmer. The consensus from the fireside chat was that companies across all sectors are re-evaluating strategies to integrate AI meaningfully into their operations, but concerns remain about data sovereignty and regulatory challenges.
For instance, payment service providers need to remain compliant with evolving anti-money laundering and know-your-customer regulations. Schwimmer pointed out that strict data localisation requirements create barriers for global businesses.
“Criminals don’t respect national boundaries, so the notion that data has to respect national boundaries is really like tying your hands behind your back,” he said, highlighting how these regulations complicate efforts to prevent financial crime. “Data sovereignty is an important topic that deserves to get attention.”
The LSEG-Microsoft partnership demonstrates how companies can effectively address data sovereignty and regulatory challenges through robust data management and compliance solutions. It empowers customers by enhancing data trust, data sovereignty, and providing a secure, scalable platform, all while adhering to responsible AI principles. Also, LSEG’s World-Check platform helps compliance teams to pinpoint potential crime and minimise false positives, and its compliant identity verification solutions help firms to onboard customers faster.
Watch the conversation with Satya Nadella and David Schwimmer on demand at: bit.ly/4i7GbCu
AI’s role in finance
One exciting application for AI technology in the financial services industry is to drive customer service improvements. LSEG, for example, manages a vast amount of data and analytics and has developed a large language model leveraging this data, which processes internal documentation, making customer service teams 50 per cent more productive. Schwimmer also highlighted the new Financial Meeting Prep app developed by Microsoft in collaboration with LSEG, which generates comprehensive meeting reports within seconds using Microsoft’s generative AI technology. The product features market-leading data, news and analytics from LSEG Workspace and enables users to streamline client communications, improve engagement and save time by creating customised reports, using LSEG’s trusted data sources and AI-generated email drafts.
During the fireside chat, Nadella highlighted AI’s impact and outlined three key considerations for AI-driven productivity: the need for AI models to evolve quickly so companies can maintain up-to-date platforms, seamless integration into existing workflows and effective change management.
“How we change-manage all this is going to be the most important thing,” he said. “How to inject these solutions so that there is real adoption and where the human should be in the loop. Microsoft Copilot to me is the UI for AI […] you need to be able to know which tasks are going to be fully automated and when the agent needs some feedback from me.”
He described how Copilot has transformed his own workflow. “Now, instead of searching through emails and documents, I just go to my Copilot and say, ‘Hey, I’m meeting with David from LSEG, tell me everything about LSEG’. Not only does it query my Microsoft 365 system, but it also goes to my customer relationship management system, queries the web and brings all that information to me in real time.”
This shift, he argued, represents a fundamental change in how work gets done. While AI-powered tools like Copilot are reshaping individual productivity, the financial services industry is also undergoing a broader transformation.
“The industry has been using the same financial desktops for 20-25 years with systems stuck in that type of legacy,” said Schwimmer. “What we’re building as part of the LSEG Workspace is a fully interoperable solution with Microsoft systems, natural language search, AI functionality and consumer engagement. What we’re building is a dramatic transformation.”
LSEG is also integrating LinkedIn functionality into its Open Directory pilot app, which is accessible within Microsoft Teams. The integration enables regulated finance professionals across different companies to collaborate. When a user is in Teams and clicks on Open Directory, they will be able to view a list of people they are already connected with. They will then be able to identify which ones are verified by LinkedIn, and chat with those external users in real-time and in one messaging application on topics essential for daily workflows.
Discover more insights like this in the Spring 2025 issue of Technology Record. Don’t miss out – subscribe for free today and get future issues delivered straight to your inbox.