AllianceBernstein appoints chief AI officer

AllianceBernstein announced Andrew Chin has been named the investment firm's first-ever chief artificial intelligence officer.

Chin has been working with the firm for 27 years having started as chief risk officer and head of quantitative research in 1997.

Chin has held various other roles within AllianceBernstein, including chief data scientist and head of investment solutions and sciences.

"Andrew's appointment to this new position recognizes our firm's progress with AI and its future potential," AllianceBernstein chief operating officer Karl Sprules said.

"As AI continues to play a critical and transformative role in enhancing AB's investment-research, operational and business procedures, and improving efficiencies across our corporate functions, we look forward to having an industry veteran like Andrew lead our firm into the future in this newly created role."

AllianceBernstein said it is using AI on everything from research to operations within the firm. It currently uses AI daily to look through company reports and filings to identify potential risks.

In September last year Chin told Insider that the firm was also using AI to monitor reports, news, and other written documents for insights in language to measure potential company performance.

Chin said this revealed that the level of complexity, or how complicated the use of language was to understand, could indicate poor future performance of a company.

He said analysts and portfolio managers were using those signals for idea generation and to time buys and sells.

In addition to front-office investors, Chin said the firm was using AI and natural language processing in its back office, including whether certain investments are in line with regulatory requirements.

Chin said the AI applications have seen improved productivity of between 50% to 75%.