Generative AI in Ag Lending

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Artificial intelligence continues to make inroads in agriculture, both on the farm and off the farm. And that includes agricultural lending. Jennifer Roths is the head of ag lending at West Monroe. She has worked with Farm Credit Associations for more than a decade and has a unique perspective on where AI is beginning to gain traction.

Roths… “ We see, Farm Credit starting to take advantage of generative AI and agentic AI in similar ways that other organizations are, where it really helps them bring information together faster, quicker, so they can provide insights and really help them get to know new borrowers and their current borrowers faster, so they can have conversations with their borrowers that are more value add and to help them as opposed to just getting their cash statements to accrual statements. There are certain things where that type of information that takes a lot of time and effort from a paperwork standpoint and/or a lot of information in large legal documents, collateral documents, gen AI can actually take and just shrink that time, that processing time, so that the lender can come prepared with more insightful questions to help those farmers, ranchers, and producers.”

Roths added that farm credit has been using machine learning and predictive AI for years, and are ahead of the curve in this area of technology in banking.