This blog was written with Syril Smith Garson, Head of Product, AI at BlackRock
The financial services industry is entering a new era of generative AI, creating new opportunities and redefining business practices. Microsoft and BlackRock’s strategic partnership is at the forefront of this evolution, exemplifying the potential of AI to redefine industry standards, enhance client experiences, and set new industry standards.
Advancements in generative AI are leading to more tailored investment management solutions, empowering users to make informed decisions more quickly and manage risks more effectively. This transformation is reshaping client journeys, enhancing analytics, and increasing automation across the sector. By using AI, financial institutions can offer more personalized services, improve operational efficiency, and stay competitive in a rapidly changing market.
Together, Microsoft and BlackRock are pioneering the future of financial services, combining technology and human expertise to deliver unparalleled value to clients worldwide.
Working together to drive financial innovation
The partnership between BlackRock and Microsoft takes advantage of AI to transform the financial services industry and bring enhanced capabilities to BlackRock and its clients—which include some of the world’s most sophisticated institutional investors and wealth managers. This empowers financial services customers to drive transformation and continuous innovation.
BlackRock’s Aladdin is a technology platform hosted on Microsoft Azure that unifies the investment management process through a common data model. Offering users a whole portfolio view, across public and private markets, Aladdin is recognized as a category-leading, software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that enables scale, provides insights, and supports true business transformation.
With Microsoft products, BlackRock is using AI technology to optimize workflows and generate insights across the firm. Azure’s open application programming interface (API) surface, for example, enables Aladdin to accelerate AI innovation. Through this partnership, BlackRock and Microsoft push each other to innovate and build products that meet the demanding (and evolving) standards of the financial services industry, and the high standards BlackRock has as both a fiduciary and global technology provider—all with an eye toward a future where investment management is more accessible, insightful, and able to deliver unique outcomes.
Transforming user experiences with agents
In this transformative AI landscape, agents emerge as a pivotal innovation, tailored to the specific needs and experiences of each application and exemplifying the integration of generative AI into the fabric of financial services. Agents are designed to support human experts with data-driven insights and recommendations, helping financial advisors navigate complex and uncertain scenarios like market volatility, regulatory changes, and cyber threats. By using agents, customers can better align their financial objectives—such as planning for retirement savings, pursuing investment growth, or handling debt management.
Philosophically, Microsoft envisions an agent as part of the team—fundamentally changing how we work and reflecting the company’s mission to empower everyone on the planet.
Agents as conversational interfaces mark a transition from one-sided interactions with computers to a bi-directional dialogue in natural language, setting a new standard for user experiences across industries. Over time, agents incorporated with Microsoft and industry-specific applications will evolve to automate approved actions on behalf of users, driving improvements in efficiency and accuracy.
In this vein, in 2023, Aladdin launched eFront Copilot, a generative AI tool for its private markets’ platform. Through eFront copilot, users can unlock new efficiencies and insights—with functionalities that allow them to access quick analytics and visualize factors such as risk and performance.
The AI-enabled, better-informed future of financial services
From automation to machine learning and natural language processing, artificial intelligence has been a part of BlackRock’s DNA for years. Alongside eFront Copilot, the company also launched new AI capabilities for Aladdin clients through Aladdin Copilot. Now available to Aladdin clients, Aladdin Copilot serves to strengthen the connections across the Aladdin platform, surfacing answers instantly to support key business decisions—uncovering actionable information faster and advancing more effective, relevant decision making.
Aladdin Copilot is making Aladdin more intelligent and responsive—enhancing productivity, enabling scale, and providing ever-more insights within the Aladdin platform.
Key features include:
- An intuitive user experience to access immediate answers—empowering every user to be an Aladdin expert.
- Configurable experiences that increase efficiency and make the Aladdin platform your own.
- Permission-dependent access to insights that enable
Additionally, users can access Aladdin Copilot securely on the Aladdin platform, ensuring data privacy and risk controls are in place to protect their data. Aladdin Copilot is built with the principles of responsible AI, helping to ensure that organizations can maximize its potential benefits while minimizing risks. As part of this commitment to responsibility, Aladdin Copilot contains content filtering and parameters to limit risk of hallucination, misinformation, or inappropriate outputs. Further, Aladdin Copilot will not give investment advice or respond to questions outside the Aladdin platform boundaries.
As its features continue to progress, Aladdin Copilot will be able to facilitate faster onboarding of new users, generate reports, summarize research, prompt proactive alerts—and more. Additionally, as AI evolves from query-driven to autonomous agents, platforms like Aladdin will expand their capabilities even further. Autonomous agents will help execute complex tasks, and continuously learn from interactions, offering advanced support, streamlined operations, and deeper insights. Microsoft is actively developing these autonomous agents to help manage routine inquiries, automate tasks, analyze data, deliver personalized experiences, and scale operations seamlessly—enabling partners to offer better services, make smarter decisions, and achieve greater success.
Balancing innovation with security and compliance
The introduction of AI promises to revolutionize work, but this is not just about reducing the number of steps in a process. It is about integrating AI in a way that deepens the quality of our insights, enriches accessibility, and automates well understood actions for efficiency all while preserving the critical human elements of oversight and control. Applying AI strategically equips clients with intelligent and secure tools that are responsive to the financial landscape. This careful balance of innovation and risk management is crucial for the positive evolution of the industry. With proper data management and governance, the industry can create responsible AI, empowering users to make informed decisions and manage risks effectively.
As AI becomes more prevalent in financial services, ensuring security and compliance is paramount. Implementing robust data management and governance frameworks supports the creation of AI applications that adhere to regulatory requirements and protect sensitive information. This commitment to security and compliance builds trust with clients and stakeholders, fostering a secure environment for innovation.
Microsoft and BlackRock are setting the stage for the future of financial services, where technology and human expertise combine to create unparalleled value for clients worldwide. By strategically leveraging AI, ensuring security and compliance, empowering users, fostering innovation, balancing automation with human oversight, and building a sustainable future, we are engineering success for today and tomorrow.
Learn more
Microsoft for Financial Services
Unlock business value and deepen client relationships in the era of AI
Explore how BlackRock is using emerging tech to create innovative solutions for clients.
Disclaimer: BlackRock’s Aladdin® platform is a financial technology platform designed for institutional, wholesale, qualified, and professional investor/client use only and is not intended for end investor use.
Allison Nachtigal is the Vice President of Microsoft Cloud for Industry, leading the Financial Services and Sovereignty teams. With over 30 years of experience in digital transformation, she drives the adoption of industry solutions with a commitment to enhancing customer engagement and delivering innovative solutions.