SAP pushes AI‑driven data integration for financial services

SAP executives say AI can become a genuine growth accelerator for financial institutions, but only when the underlying data is clean, harmonised and trusted. Thomas Pfiester of SAP warned that “AI is only as good as the data beneath it — and adoption is what turns that promise into real business value.”

In a related discussion, SAP CFO Dominik Asam and SAP Fioneer CEO Matthias Tomann highlighted the sector’s chronic fragmentation – legacy systems, regulatory silos and patchwork architecture – as the main barrier to AI. Their partnership, launched in 2021, aims to replace that complexity with a unified cloud‑ERP platform that delivers real‑time, integrated data and enables AI‑driven execution across banking, lending, insurance and analytics. The goal is an “autonomous enterprise” where AI not merely informs decisions but orchestrates end‑to‑end processes under clear guardrails.