ZURICH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Following the announcement of a strategic partnership to help businesses ensure AI safety and trustworthiness, LatticeFlow and DEKRA proudly unveil the successful completion of the first commercial AI Assessment for one of Switzerland's well renowned financial institutions, Migros Bank. This milestone demonstrates the commitment of both companies to ensure comprehensive and impartial assessments of business-critical AI use cases in the banking and finance sectors based on the latest ISO standards for data quality and model robustness.
First Commercial AI Assessment: The Use Case
Migros Bank - the strategic financing partner for Switzerland's largest online car leasing provider, Gowago, is dedicated to simplifying everyday life for its customers. To this end, they enable customers to conveniently arrange car leases entirely from the comfort of their homes. At the core of Gowago's innovative solution lies an AI model that accurately predicts the residual value of cars at the end of the lease term. This capability empowers Migros Bank and Gowago to provide competitively priced leasing terms with full transparency to their customers.
Stephan Wick, COO & CIO at Migros Bank, emphasizes the importance of an independent assessment of business-critical AI models and vendors: “Innovative AI solutions, such as those offered by Gowago, have the potential to revolutionize and enhance the services we provide to our customers. However, ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the AI models in use, as demonstrated by an independent assessment service provider, remains paramount in mitigating risks and ensuring regulatory compliance.”
To address this challenge, DEKRA, renowned for decades of expertise in conducting independent, third-party safety and security audits for companies all over the globe, and LatticeFlow, with its industry leading AI assessment technology, joined forces to provide Migros Bank with a thorough assessment of Gowago’s AI models.
AI Safety Framework: Timely Perspective and Business Impact
This completion of the first commercial AI assessment coincides with the introduction of the EU AI Act and the White House mandate to establish new standards for safe, reliable, and trustworthy AI. In close alignment with these government-led initiatives, DEKRA and LatticeFlow have been collaborating with US and international government bodies, including NIST and the ISO, to offer the industry’s first AI assessment services available to enterprise clients.
With the rapid adoption of AI across industries, the need to validate the correctness of AI models in alignment with business objectives is of utmost importance. This is particularly vital in sectors where AI is used in mission-critical operations or falls under regulatory scrutiny. In the case of Migros Bank, the decision to conduct the AI assessment was driven by several strategic objectives:
- Risk mitigation: As a critical requirement set by the Head of Risk Management at Migros Bank, expert audits are essential for managing internal risks at the bank.
- Regulatory compliance: The Swiss financial market supervisory authority, FINMA, requires a complete audit trail of the assessment, to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. The AI assessment adheres with the latest ISO standards, ensuring the safety and reliability of the bank’s systems in line with internationally recognized standards.
- Business decision-making: The comprehensive insights gained from the AI assessment enable Migros Bank management to make informed decisions regarding the use of innovative, AI-based solutions in bank operations.
- Independent technical assessment: To ensure objectivity, the technical evaluation was conducted by a third-party provider, LatticeFlow, who was uninvolved in the design and implementation phases of the AI project, offering an unbiased and reliable assessment of the AI models.
Dr. Petar Tsankov, Co-founder and CEO of LatticeFlow, stated, "Our comprehensive approach to evaluating AI robustness and reliability, which encompasses the entire AI lifecycle, has transitioned from dialogues with governments and standard organizations to conducting the industry’s first AI assessments. At LatticeFlow, we've observed remarkable growth in demand for AI assessments from enterprises and Fortune 500 companies in 2023, even in the absence of regulatory pressures. We remain committed to our mission of empowering them to safely harness the business potential of state-of-the-art AI models."
As AI continues to shape the future of businesses across diverse industries, establishing reliability, transparency, and trust through AI audits and technical assessments remain a fundamental prerequisite for widespread implementation.
Dr. Xavier Valero Gonzalez, Director of AI & Advanced Analytics at DEKRA, added: “We conducted a thorough assessment of Gowago’s AI system with our partner LatticeFlow. On the one hand, DEKRA audited the AI lifecycle processes, from development, testing and deployment up to operation. To that end, our expert auditors used the DEKRA AI Assessment Framework, which focuses on assessing the AI System Quality as well as its compliance with upcoming EU regulations. On the other hand, our partner LatticeFlow conducted an end-to-end technical assessment of the AI lifecycle - leveraging their robust AI platform to evaluate data quality, model robustness, and model deployment to ensure safety and trustworthiness in compliance with the latest ISO standards.”
About Migros Bank
Migros Bank is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Migros-Genossenaschafts-Bund and as such is not listed on the stock exchange. This allows it to focus optimally on creating customer benefit rather than on increasing its share value. It employs around 1,700 people and operates over 70 branches in all parts of the country, making it both widely networked and regionally well anchored. Its approximately one million customers entrust the bank with customer deposits totaling over 45 billion francs. As the seventh-largest bank in Switzerland, Migros Bank bears great responsibility for its environment and society and consciously lives up to this responsibility.
About LatticeFlow
Founded by world renowned AI researchers from ETH Zurich, LatticeFlow enables enterprise companies to develop production-ready machine learning models at scale. By systematically identifying and fixing model and data issues at scale, we help enterprises unlock the true potential of AI. Additionally, we offer a comprehensive technical AI assessment to assist enterprises achieve regulatory compliance, reliability and robustness for their mission-critical AI applications. LatticeFlow has won several awards including the AI Privacy Challenge in April 2023, followed by the Swiss AI Award and the US Army Global AI Award.
Please contact media@latticeflow.ai.
About DEKRA
DEKRA was originally founded in 1925 to ensure road safety through vehicle inspection. With a much wider scope today, DEKRA is the world’s largest independent non-listed expert organization in the testing, inspection, and certification sector. As a global provider of comprehensive services and solutions, we help our customers improve their safety, security, and sustainability outcomes. In 2022, DEKRA generated sales totaling nearly EUR 3.8 billion. The company currently employs almost 49,000 people who offer qualified and independent expert services in approximately 60 countries on five continents. With a platinum rating from EcoVadis, DEKRA is now ranked in the top one percent of sustainable businesses.
To learn more, visit https://www.dekra.com.
