Meet Aish Agrawal, Managing Director, Infomediary® Data Solutions 

Although Aish’s career began in industrial engineering, he quickly recognized his passion for digital technology.

“I pivoted almost immediately towards the tech side, leveraging what I’ve learned in industrial engineering, it was all about efficiency,” he says.

Starting out in software testing and product development, he developed an understanding of how technology impacts operations. After working at several fast-growing companies, he founded his own ed-tech start up focused on educational outsourcing: “It was a shop of about 20 to 30 people in India that did one-on-one online math tutoring for middle school and high school kids here in the United States,” he says.

Running a start up meant taking on multiple roles. “I played every role one can imagine—from software tester to marketer to sales, to troubleshooting."

Lessons from other industries

After exiting his start up, Aish pursued an MBA at Duke University and pivoted into product management. He spent a decade in publishing, working with Scholastic and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

“Because I've been on the IT side, I've been on the product side, I've been on the start up side, it gives me a very different point of view - I've seen how products are made, packaged, sold, and critically, how they are consumed!”

In the education sector, he saw how technology can fail if it doesn’t work within the user environment.

“We built a great ed-tech product with high-quality graphics, but once we rolled it out, we realized schools couldn’t run it effectively due to bandwidth constraints.”

AI’s role in financial services

Now, at BBH, he is at the forefront of deploying new and emerging technologies like AI and machine learning in financial services. He is working with teams across BBH to ensure these technologies are not being deployed for the sake of it, but they are aimed at the right business challenge. “We don’t build anything that isn’t needed.”

But the challenge isn’t just integrating AI – it’s ensuring it is used responsibly and safely, with a focus on governance and risk management.

“There's no limit to what AI can potentially do but a critical focus is how we integrate it responsibly into our business. Regulation plays a key role for financial institutions and global regulators are focused on areas such as transparency of process, IP infringement, AI-washing, and data loss.”

Building AI-driven efficiencies

BBH has a long history of using technology to solve business process automation challenges. The shift from technologies based on process knowledge to those which integrate general knowledge, like AI and machine learning, presents exciting opportunities for further advancements.

One of BBH’s new machine learning-driven tools helps asset managers reduce the risk associated with publishing incorrect fund net asset values (NAV). Many institutions still rely on manual, Excel-based ‘shadow NAV’ calculations to verify fund administrator values. BBH’s machine learning-driven solution automates this process for our clients, improving accuracy, reducing regulatory risk, and allowing firms to spend less time on manual tasks and better utilize those resources in other areas of the business.

This is a clear example of AI and machine learning being used to enhance operational efficiency.

“How do we take some of their pain points away through the use of technology, but not through the deployment of ultra-proprietary solutions where interoperability is a challenge?” he says.

Whether the conversation is about AI or another software solution, the key is to focus on the end user. “You have to always think about the end user's pain points, be empathetic to their environment, and build products that align with that need.”

One thing that keeps Aish engaged is the rapid pace of technological change.

“In the last few years we’ve seen the rise of blockchain, then machine learning, now AI, and something else tomorrow. That keeps people on their toes, in a good way.” Regardless of the technology, our role as an asset servicer is to apply it to the right business challenge, to optimize business processes and be able to enhance our services to our clients.