Explainable AI in Banking: Bridging the Gap Between Promise and Practice

While artificial intelligence now drives credit scoring, fraud detection, and risk decisions across banking and FinTech, the models behind these decisions often remain black boxes. 

This month’s EA Forum event looks at Explainable AI (XAI) in Banking. Drawing on a systematic review of 78 studies, Information and Technology Strategy Specialist, Ntombi Tuge, will examine why XAI adoption still lags despite mounting regulatory pressure—from GDPR’s “right to explanation” to growing supervisory expectations for transparent, auditable AI.

Key topics in her presentation will include:

• The Consumer Perspective: How fairness and trust are undermined when algorithms deny loans or flag transactions without explanation. 

• The Core Challenges: Unpacking the accuracy-interpretability trade-off and the “explaining the explanation” problem.

• Overcoming Barriers: Addressing the organisational and cultural barriers behind implementation failures.

• A New Pathway: How banks, FinTechs, and regulators can evolve XAI from a technical add-on into an embedded organisational capability supported by human-centric governance.