Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Saurabh Kakkar and Michael A Forman
Welcome to Networking Unleashed, Building Profitable Connections. I'm your host, Michael Forman. AI is changing banking, credit decisions, and how organizations operate, but here's the bigger question: Just because AI can make the decision, should we always let it? Today's guest is taking us inside the move from AI exper- experimentation to real world implementation, where trust, transparency, judgment, and accountability matter just as much as the technology, because the future of AI isn't only about what machines can do, it's about what leaders are willing to be responsible for.
So I would like to introduce to the podcast, first of all, welcome, and second, I'd like to welcome Sunny to the podcast, and if you could just give me a, a brief a Cliff Note version of how you got where you are today Absolutely. First of all, thank you so much, Michael, for giving me this opportunity.
This is wonderful and a very nice setup, so really appreciate that. Just to give you a very brief intro about myself, I can call myself somebody who has lived through the banking space. I'm part of financial services for almost twenty years now. I've worked with almost all the big banks across the world.
Very fortunate about it. In fact, my start of my career started with a lot of banking consulting business, so that allowed me to see various aspects of almost all the banking network. What we have realized till now is that in from an entire banking space data is the key element here. And as we have always progressed through our, start of our year Y2K, wherein, the computers came in, and there was a paradigm shift in how we saw data, we are now experiencing something really big, which is the AI paradigm shift.
And that's where, I'm here to give my experience. I myself lead the AI space within my space within my corporation. What's happening right now is nothing new. We always saw elements of it in the past as well. If I take you back from how it all started, it li-literally started in nineteen sixties.
There are instances and theories and research that can literally tell you that AI is not a buzzword or a new word. It was always existing. It's just when we work, there are new mindsets around that, and today's mindset is AI. But in my personal opinion, a lot of people don't understand AI the way they they...
it should be. So just to give you a little bit of m-my background here that I have gone through those aspects of banking data wherein it was literally more like, a, a manual way of working, then came the computers, then came the analysis on the pa-part of us getting more and more into depth of data.
But today, the depth of data, the amount of data that we deal with has tremendously increased. So I'm here to basically share my experiences and my analysis and my judgment around how things are placed today versus how they gonna be, progressing in the near future. Okay, great.
That's a, that was a great segue into my questions because I'm gonna be all about you, all about banking and AI and we'll see where it goes. AI can analyze someone's financial history in seconds, but it can't truly know that person. Yes. As AI plays a larger role in banking and credit decisions, how do we make sure we don't lose the human being behind the data?
That's a very good question, and the way I say it is in our space, in the space of analytics, I'll say, even if... And I'm not gonna even restrict it to banking space. It's basically across the board. Data is as good as what you put in versus what's coming out, right? So it's basically garbage in, garbage out.
If you- ... don't have control over data, the outputs will be absolutely non-trustworthy, right? To a- address your question yes, there is a huge element of human intervention. We call it HITL, which is human interven- intervention aspect of the data. What we really need to understand is we need to use AI to automate things, and there is an element of efficiency here.
That's where I was like, trying to mention in the beginning of my call as well that a lot of pe- people see AI as just a magic word. It is not. It's basically something that's allowing you to do your work more efficiently at this point of time. It is giving you more dimensions around your work.
It's allowing you to have more thought process which you could not do, or even if you could do, you knew that it would take you a lot of time and an effort. But right now, with AI, those things have become much more achievable, and, they are at your service, at basically available to you. Now, from a human intervention point of view, absolutely true.
There is an element of deciding what data is, how is the quality of the data. I will further elaborate in my discussion later on this podcast. There's a concept of data hallucination, which really means what is data looking like? Is the data appropriate? Have you vetted the data? Is it a standardized format of data or not?
So there is, there's a lot of element where a human needs to participate and understand how data is looking before we even start using it. I hope that addresses your question. Y- yes, it does, and you've answered actually a lot of questions. On my podcast, I've had a lot of AI developers, AI, people who use AI, and you just really put it all in a nutshell, and you explained AI is a tool, but you need to put in the human element to get the right answers.
So- Absolutely ... that is very important what you had just said. I hope everybody is listening because what he just said is so powerful, so impactful, that this is the way you truly should use AI. Okay. AI in banking, trust can take years to build and seconds to lose. Does AI change how leaders earn trust, or does it simply raise the standard?
Again, this is very c-correct when you're asking that question. AI is, in my opinion and a lot of research actually also validate that, is, again, even beyond automation. It's basically something that needs to be addressed from how does it make your bottom line grow? It's a concept of ROI, and this is, again, my research is basically making it more elaborate.
Just to, digress a little, I have currently published a book specifically on the details of this analysis. There are two patents as well that I have filed in Germany, wherein I spoke more about how AI is shifting the paradigm shift for our AI leaders. Basically, what's going on is pe- all of our...
From a leadership point of view we want to s- create efficiencies here, but at the same time, efficiency doesn't mean we just automate a s- a task which was always never impacting our profit situation or, reduction of cost. What we are right now understanding is we need to first perform a thorough audit of any organization or maybe like a department and understand how the process is laid out currently and what are the areas that can actually be highlighted through AI and potentially improved.
If that potential improvement creates an ROI impact, that's a leadership preposition. That's where leaders are interested. That's where they are trying to invest. I'm seeing that a lot of people not, are not really doing it, and they're jumping the ladder, and they're basically trying to copy somebody and say, "Oh, somebody did this.
Let me also adopt that technology." It's really not in that mindset. It's a very organizational niche kind of a mindset. We need to understand how an existing organization is set up currently, identify those areas where AI brings in more value preposition, do a thorough testing around it, create POCs around it, and then once something is successfully giving you the a value preposition, then you see it from an organizational point of view.
There are a lot of aspects that I've also mentioned in my book and also didn't explain, I tried to explain in my patents as well that a thorough analysis is needed. Reason being, we will come across a lot of areas wherein something which was being created like a cost preposition suddenly now looks like a profit preposition for that organization, and they can absolutely show that impact in their ROI analysis.
Okay. Very good. Very good. We're moving from experimenting with AI to putting it into real business decisions. At what point do- At what point does AI stop being a technology decision and become a leadership and values decision? I think my discussion just now touches that aspect. It did.
It did. Anything you want to add to that, though? Anything? Yeah, absolutely. Because you really covered it, but just give me a shorter version of what you, what I just asked. Absolutely. See, the answer lies in not just identifying an automation aspect. The answer lies in identifying aspects which can be automated and create an ROI increased preposition.
It could result in increase in profits or a reduction in cost or an, an an, an ability to increase your business scope. That's how I will put it. If that's not happening with your AI initiative, you have literally just converted a process into an automated process without any impact. Very good.
Very good. If an AI system makes a decision that is technically defensible but feels fundamentally unfair, who should have the courage and authority to challenge it? Absolutely. So again, this, this whole question lies on how this process was implemented from an AI point of view. What were the objectives they were trying to achieve?
All those things should be set up before this initiation needs to happen. So we compare the output of our process. Again, we created a more efficient process, but the expectations around that process needs to be already laid out. It needs to be organizationally validated, and if they are not meeting that purpose and it's only showing efficiency, in my opinion, that is a wrong move.
Yeah. Absolutely. And by you preparing to input into the AI you ha- you're not doing it... It's not gonna be the first time out, right? You put a prompt in and you say no, that's not what I wanted." You put another prompt in, and you tailor the prompt to what you get to the results, and you say, "Okay, that's what I'm looking for," and then you can put it in.
But it takes that, that human touch, the leader, the manager of that to know that and to implement that. That's correct. That's correct. Okay. And that's where the concept of AI modeling comes in, and we can always talk about it. Okay. As AI leaders access, as AI gives leaders access to more information, could it actually make curiosity and listening more valuable?
And are we at risk of knowing more about people while understanding them less? Great question. Risk is always a subjective area, in my opinion. In my-- I see it in a more positive way. AI has literally allowed us to create absolutely different level of dimensions. In my opinion, that calls out for we able to provide more.
In my opinion, that calls out for we able to create more value prepositions for our audience, for our clients, for our stakeholders. I am seeing it in that aspect. What we could-- Like I said, I was mentioning in my earlier part of my discussion as well AI has allowed us to do things which needed months into days or even minutes.
That has allowed us to now start focusing on greater aspects, trying to create products and values which were never thought of or were never like the priority because of the cost preposition. Everything at the end of the day is a cost-benefit analysis. AI, one aspect, and that's why I'm touching the concept of ROI again and again, is the tool that you can use to create that cost-benefit analysis much more faster, efficient, and more dynamic ever before.
As you said, AI is a tool that you can use. It's a quiver in your arrow. It just helps you get rid of the minutiae, take care of all the little stuff that would take months to achieve, yet, and then you can automatically go to the next step, right? Absolutely. So it saved you all that time. Okay.
What happens to organizational culture when employees begin wondering whether they're working with AI or quietly being evaluated and replaced by it? What responsibility do leaders have in that conversation? That's a problem that we're facing currently. The way I see it AI is not replacing jobs.
It's replacing people who are not adopting AI, and that's where people are getting confused. If your work can be expanded and you can make yourself visible as somebody who can do more because now you have AI, you're very much a, a- absolutely important ent- person to the entity. Reason being, the entity has already invested in you.
You know the data, you know the environment, you know the culture. See, AI is not a magic word. Everything also needs to be implemented. It still needs to be adopted. It needs to be absorbed in an organization system. It still comes up with own technologies, which are still products that needs to be adopted and, implemented with- within a particular organization.
And for that, they need people who are most familiar with it. So if you are somebody who is absolutely interested in adopting AI technology, interested in learning that space, you become an ideal candidate for that matter. What I'm seeing is people are, again, seeing it from a point of view of a job reduction.
In my opinion, and there is a lot of studies here also, if there is a study from McKinsey that actually already explained that these many jobs will be gone, but these many will be created because, like I said in my earlier pitch, we are seeing new dimensions. New dimensions will result in additional products, and they will need more people to build those products.
So in my opinion, the from a leadership point of view also, my encouragement to my team is learn AI, understand how it can benefit our current process. We should not be shying away from showing it to the world, and then we basically establish ourself as a more mature organization Yes and everybody who embraces that AI i- in the workforce, they can say, "Okay this is doing my job."
It will do your job, but then you expand your job. You expand the description of your job. Say, "Okay, I can do this with AI, but I can also do all of this and keep the job." You know- Yes ... way back when with the Industrial Revolution, when cars first came in, right? And it replaced all the horse and buggy and all the iron, the black iron smiths and everything else, they lost their jobs, but the auto- Yeah
market created all sorts of new ones. That's correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. So it's pretty much the same thing, but you have to adapt, and you have to learn how to adapt. That's all. And I think just to complement to that, wonderfully explained, by the way. Beautiful, and that, that's a very good analogy there.
Another great analogy is Y2K. When things were being done manually by writing stuff on the books, look what happened. Computers came in, and we were like, "Oh, now we don't need these many people." Have we really seen that? No. I think we have... The jobs have expanded tremendously. The economies have literally grown from there.
Abso- absolutely and actually, that's good. I'm gonna have to use that one in my next... I run a a networking meeting every week for businesses to all come and exchange ideas, and I'm gonna use that. Okay? Thank you. So I'm gonna steal that from you. Okay. Appreciate it. The people around the leader influence how they think and what they question.
How important is it for executives implementing AI to build relationships with people willing to disagree with them? The answer lies in analysis. The, it's not about disagreement, it's about answering the next step. If AI has allowed leaders to see more, people who are working for them needs to also have that thing addressed in using AI, right?
So basically, at the end of the day and this is a very s- very simple discussion here, we are not changing the infrastructure. We are not changing an organization. What we are changing is way of doing our work. What that really means is the questions and the data and everything that we are working on still remains the same, but the analysis around it the, the aspects of that has increased.
So for- from that point of view a f- if leader is asking questions in a more dynamic and a deeper, and mindset, the organization should have the same technology and same mindset adopted too, because at the end of the day, an organization is a reflection of our leadership mindset, right? So if we know that our leadership is going to into this mindset, our processes should also reflect it.
So again, that's exactly what I'm doing in my world as well. We are n- already anticipating that there will be more questions and more dif- like, different aspects of our data will be addressed from a leadership point of view, how are we getting ourself. And that's also combines and ties down to the fact that people need to adopt technology.
They cannot challenge it because that's not how world moves. We really need to ride the wagon as the way it is moving, and rather be part of it, contribute to it, and make it even better. Absolutely. You can't have a circle of your senior staff and have, let's say there are seven people, and you can't have six of the people using AI, and the seventh person saying I don't want to touch it."
He's gonna fall way behind- Yeah ... and probably not keep his job because he's falling behind. And- So you just have to keep... Go ahead. Absolutely. One, that, that reminds me of this aspect of our mindset that today I'm able to produce something, let's say in two seconds, but that product looks so good and satisfying that a lot of people are like, "Oh it's gonna ev- tell everybody that AI did it."
Yes, but AI is my tool right now. I am going to market as a tool. In fact, that's what the accomplishment is, and that's what the expectation is, that, now you have done your job faster, efficiently, more analytical, m- deeper than ever because you have a tool that you utilized. Ab- absolutely. I can't agree with you more.
Absolutely. When speed, profit, and efficiency conflict with fairness, transparency, or human judgment, what should determine which one wins? That's one of the biggest question we're trying to answer now. Yeah ... everything that comes up new is hyped. We see only the positives, but then when we start settling with it, start living with it, we see everything has a pro and a con attached to it.
So does AI. AI is much faster. There's a concept of deep learning here. What that really means is we have way, way more data, and the ability to analyze that data. So data was always there, but we never was able to capture it or analyze it because we did not have the mechanism or the tools.
Now we do. What does that mean? That means there is a lot of issue that were never addressed. I'll give you an example from a banking space. From a point of view of risk, and I also manage that area, so I understand this very deeply. The aspects of risk were predefined. We have always known because banks have been existing for years, they know what they were dealing with.
But things have changed. With AI, the ability of our threat mechanism has tremendously changed from what we saw earlier, and hence there is a huge need of understanding that there is a lot of things that we might not have seen earlier, and there's an a- there- there's an aspect of analyzing it and including it in our models.
Just to give you a little bit of more technical answer here, and I was telling earlier also, AI is not a verbal discussion. It still needs to be implemented through technology. What it means is, with this new paradigm shift, our whole infrastructure, the AI infrastructure, needs to now adapt the new threats that are coming in.
There is a huge discussions around cybersecurity risks. Just last year there was increase in type of threats by 1 million in banking space. So we now have so much more to be worried about from that point of view. But again, for me, it's not a worry. It's about the challenge that we are trying to adopt with the new technology, and there will be absolutely maturity around it.
And again, it will continue to be, a cat-and-mouse game that we will always keep increasing, and we will always start maturing ourselves. Yeah, I suppose that's human nature or the American way. As soon as we attain that, that level, we want it, and we're going for the next level. And it's always gonna be they're gonna go, we're gonna catch up.
They're gonna go, we're gonna catch up. So I d- absolutely agree with that. Okay, let's bring this podcast full circle. 20 years from now, what do you hope people say that the banking industry got right, not technically, but humanly during the rise of AI? Again I'll start off with a happy answer here.
Did we imagine flying in an aircraft? Our answer is they were like, "Oh, there is no way, and why do we even need it?" In my opinion, everything is progressing for a greater goal and a greater achievement. There will be more efficiency and more satisfactory products that will be delivered to human beings, and they will be adopting that as their normal.
In my opinion, the things will now go much faster, and the way we will start looking life is very different from what we have been seeing, because there will be more availability of aspects around it. So all positive from my side. I'm already seeing that there is so much more mindset that is being created.
And just to add to this from a maturity model point of view, imagine the newer generation who is going to start off with AI. Their background is not what we have seen. The reason these questions are being asked is somebody have, has a comparison. Somebody who does not, they're gonna be basically sailing through this, their expectations, their maturity, and their mindset will be based out of this AI paradigm shift.
And in my opinion, 20 years from now, the world will be even better, even it will be much safer, much stronger, much more capable of what we are today Very good. Very good. This was, this- you're just a great podcast guest. You are filled with information that I was dying to know, and you answered absolutely every question that I had.
I'm so grateful ... Sunny, if somebody wanted to get hold of you what's the best way to- for them to get a hold of you? Either to read your book or be mentored or just to say hi, how would they get a hold of you? So various ways. Like I said, I'm always reachable through my contact details. And that's the best way to reach out to me.
But if somebody wants to understand how I'm, like, contributing to this space, there's a lot of aspects around me. I am right now a dedicated global researcher. Like I said, I have printed my book. It's already on Amazon. It literally just got launched this that got published this month. My two patents are very interesting for anybody who's interested in understanding from a more technical aspect of it.
It's driven around European regulatory compliance. Very interesting to know how things can actually be achieved through AI. More aspects are like I'm currently contributing to a lot of scholarly articles. I contribute my knowledge into that. I'm basically authoring those articles to express different aspects of AI.
And one of the major influences that I am actually really enjoying it is being a keynote speaker to a lot of international conferences. I've seen that people are very curious about knowing from an American pi- point of view. I'm privileged and honored that I'm in US for past 20 years to have seen this world very closely.
And to be honest with you, I'm really enjoying my journey of sharing what I know, learning from a lot of very, very learned people, and it's, it has given me a new enthusiasm. It's more like me being a student again and trying to say what next? Good, g- and you know what?
That's what this podcast is all about. It's educating people on the various subjects that I have brought. It's what I go from coast to coast and I speak about. It's the communication between everybody, everything, the networking. It's all to educate. So Sunny, I am so grateful that you came on, and here's the takeaway.
AI can process the information, but people have to own the decision. Absolutely. As technology gets smarter, as technology gets smarter, leadership has to become more human, not less. Trust, judgment, transparency, and accountability aren't outdated skills. They're becoming more valuable. If you enjoyed today's episode follow and subscribe to Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections for more conversations about networking, communication, leadership, and relationships behind business success.
And share this episode with a leader who's trying to figure out where AI ends and human responsibility begins. I'm Michael Forman. Remember, technology can help us make faster decisions. Character determines whether th- they are the right ones. So I'll see you on the next episode. Sunny, thank you again for coming on my podcast.
Absolutely. You made it wonderful. Thank you, sir. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. This was wonderful. You started my day really well, and I'm so motivated and pumped. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
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📍 And that's a wrap, folks. A huge thank you to our guests for sharing such incredible insights today. And of course, a big shout-out to you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in and spending your time with us. If you're interested in my digital courses, being coached, or having me come and talk to your company, just go to MichaelAForman.com and fill out the request form.
Remember, networking isn't about being perfect. It's about being present. So take what you've learned today, get out there, and make some meaningful connections. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and share it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.
Let's keep the conversation going. You can find me on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or my website, MichaelAForman.com/podcast.
Michael is a business networking expert specializing in enhancing professionals' networking and communication skills to drive profitability. As a leading authority in this field, he is highly sought after for his dynamic presentations and workshops. His extensive experience has consistently led to significant improvements in corporate profitability by empowering individuals and organizations to connect more effectively and efficiently.
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