Earlier this year the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) announced that its AI research institute Borealis AI would partner with Red Hat and NVIDIA to develop new AI computing platforms designed to revolutionize and transform the customer banking experience. It announced this in keeping with a mission to stay up to date with the rapid technology changes firing through the finance industry. Last week, the RBC announced the launch of Aiden, an AI-powered electronic trading platform, by its Capital Markets Division.
Aiden was built by the bank’s Borealis AI research center, harnessing its technical know-how to produce results utilising deep reinforcement learning. Through applying the reinforcement learning to a notoriously changing environment like equity trading, the AI will be able to combine this with predictive analysis of individual behavior to provide personalized insights for trading. It is the bank’s belief that this trading platform will measurably improve results and insights for clients in an “explainable way.” The bank has further shared that Aiden has already proven the ability to steer the challenges of fluid and dynamic market conditions in real-time.
What makes Aiden stand out from traditional trading algorithms is that the AI will not require continuous re-coding. Impressively, Aiden has the ability to make more than 32 million calculations per order to execute trading decisions based on live market data. Aiden also adapts by learning from previous moves by accruing data to improve on each trade.
Speaking on Aiden, Shary Mudassir, Co-Head of Global Equity and Execution for RBC Capital Markets said, “The market volatility we have seen during Covid-19 has been a great proving ground for Aiden. Aiden was able to recognize the sudden changes in the market and adapt to them, allowing it to preserve performance.”
It appears that the RBC is making rapid strides to keep up with the technology shifts in the sector and Aiden demonstrates its attempt to capitalize on the increasing efficiency and accuracy of AI models. It appears that the RBC is also set up for the computational complexities associated with AI models, having built an in-house AI infrastructure to ensure any transformation technology will be controlled and brought to market faster. This development comes hot off the tail of the RBC also unveiling two digital services last month: Nomi Insights and Nomi Find & Save.
Aiden is currently available to RBC Capital Markets clients trading in U.S. and Canadian equities. The RBC intends to introduce the platform to more clients across geographical markets in the coming months.
