There is no doubt that we are experiencing a period of profound change in the form of the digital transition. The impact of the technological advancements all around us – from ICT to IoT – has even been compared to the impact of the  industrial revolution. At the same time, I think that we have yet to experience the full potential of the digital transformation in the workplace and in the European Investment Fund’s line of business, which is to provide access to finance for Europe’s companies. My commitment is to make sure that that potential is realised.

Taking full advantage of the digital transformation has many facets. First and foremost, it should lead to significant improvements for our partners and ultimately, for the final beneficiaries of our financing. At the EIF, we work with more than 600 intermediaries like banks and guarantee institutions, and with more than 1200 fund managers across Europe. All those relationships involve processes and procedures like due diligence, monitoring, reporting, payments, controls and regular exchanges of information.

What if we could eliminate errors? Fully automate processes? Link up information systems efficiently – but also securely? If we could really harness the power of the digital transformation across all this work, who would benefit most? The real winner would be the entrepreneur, who will enjoy access to finance in simpler and faster ways, and with fewer administrative strings attached.

Our deployment of around €15bn of public resources annually could be sped up and streamlined even further, reducing time-tomarket. That would create greater capacity to deploy more resources to the European capital markets – think for example of targeted support for key sectors of strategic importance to the European economy, like security and defence, or space, semi-conductors, clean tech and health tech.

But looking inwards as well, I would like to draw from the digital transformation even more positivity by automating repetitive and lowadded- value tasks, freeing up time and resources. We are training our staff to get the most out of the new digital tools, transitioning to a new workplace reality where they can focus their energy on more interesting and creative, high value-added tasks. 

That’s the second dimension. It will allow our staff to focus on building stronger partnerships with financial entities across the continent and reaching further with our financing solutions. It will allow us to work harder on attracting private capital in the pursuit of public policy goals – most notably in the private markets. Is this not happening already? Yes, but we are in transition. AI is taking the world by storm, but we’re just getting to know each other. This relationship has so much more potential. And we are taking concrete steps towards realizing it. All EIF staff are equipped with Microsoft 365 Copilot, their very own AI assistant, ready to help them prepare for a meeting, summarize a long email thread or suggest the perfect Excel equation for the job. Copilot Agents are unlocking internal know-how and analysing complex documentation.

At the same time, we are keeping people in the centre – we are supporting our staff on their AI upskilling journey with coaching, trainings, prompt libraries, knowledge sharing sessions, and more. 

Our ultimate goal in deploying any technology, including AI tools such as the Copilot, is to be able to serve our clients better, faster and more efficiently.

The European Union is probably one of the greatest projects mankind has seen. But it’s a very complex one, too, which makes it a great candidate to benefit from the digital transformation.

To come closer to its citizens, and in the case of the world of finance, to bring capital markets closer together, overcoming administrative burdens and language barriers, building trust and ultimately making European support for our ambitious entrepreneurs more efficient and effective, driving competitiveness, growth, and jobs. That’s our goal.