Strategic Prioritization of AI Initiatives in Financial Services Under the EU AI Act

Financial service providers are currently confronted with an expanding range of potential artificial intelligence applications. Many of these initiatives promise efficiency gains, improved risk management or entirely new customer services. Yet organisations rarely face a shortage of ideas; the difficulty lies elsewhere. Faced with limited resources and growing regulatory obligations, financial service providers must decide which initiatives should be pursued first and how these projects can be implemented without breaching the requirements of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act. The challenge is therefore not only technological but also organisational and strategic. Against this background, the thesis asks how financial institutions can prioritize AI initiatives in a way that maximizes strategic value while remaining compliant with the Artificial Intelligence Act. To address this question, the study combines legal and managerial perspectives. It first examines the regulatory framework of the Artificial Intelligence Act as well as its implications for financial service providers. This legal analysis is followed by a presentation of managerial approaches to project prioritization and strategic sequencing within organisations. Building on these two strands, the thesis develops a framework designed to support prioritization decisions in AI adoption. The framework is subsequently applied to real-world case studies, from which a set of practical recommendations is derived. The analysis suggests that prioritizing AI initiatives under the AI Act is a matter of organizing institutional readiness. Where ex ante assessment, interdisciplinary governance, strategic role positioning and deliberate sequencing are combined, innovation and compliance need not pull in opposite directions. Instead, they become part of a coordinated structure for decision-making.