Where Are the Big Banks Deploying AI? Simple Answer: Everywhere
By Steve Cocheo, Senior Executive Editor at The Financial Brand
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Executive Summary
- Artificial intelligence tools expand and evolve weekly. In recent quarterly earnings calls, equity analysts prodded executives to expose how they are adopting AI and if it is improving performance.
- AI is revamping key tasks at some banks. Others, like Citizens Bank, see AI as a central component of a complete reimagining of the banking business.
- Some institutions still insulate customers from direct contact with GenAI and other AI types. But others, like Synchrony, have deployed customer-facing AI enthusiastically.
JPMorgan Chase has expanded into multiple businesses that didn’t used to be considered banking. Take Chase Travel Group, now ranked in the top travel sellers in the U.S. Or Chase Media Solutions, the megabank’s take on the growing retail digital media trend.
Befitting its size, Chase generally goes big.
Securities analysts probed some of the nation’s biggest banks during second quarter earnings briefings about their current use and future plans for artificial intelligence. It was reasonable for one analyst to ask Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO, if, given the bank’s position in the industry, Chase would consider acquiring a large language model and then developing the LLM for the financial services business.
Dimon said the bank uses LLMs. However, “there’s no reason for us to own one. At least, we can’t figure out why that would make sense.”
“Uses LLMs,” of course, is almost understatement when you’re talking about the nation’s largest bank.
In a November 2024 Q&A at an industry conference, Teresa Heitsenrether, the bank’s chief data and analytics officer, recounted how Chase had introduced a tool — LLM Suite — earlier in the year. The tool enables hundreds of thousands of Chase employees to use multiple external LLMs. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Heitsenrether also said that Chase wasn’t likely even going to develop its own LLM.
“Building our own model isn’t how we differentiate ourselves,” the banker said. “The secret sauce for us is how you use them with our information.”
During earnings briefings among the top 50 U.S. banks, analysts often pressed for updates about all forms of artificial intelligence. What they heard back, in varying levels of detail, covered not only leading-edge forms of AI, like agentic AI and GenAI, but older forms of the technology such as natural language processing, machine learning and more.
Read more: Banks Risk AI Burnout by Chasing Speed Over Strategy
BofA Promotes Its AI Activities in Detail
Of all the banks presenting, BofA was the most explicit in describing how it is using various forms of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence allows the bank to effectively change the work across more areas of its operations than prior types of tech tools allowed, according to Brian Moynihan, chair and CEO.
The bank included a full-page graphic among its presentation slides, the chart describing four “pillars,” in Moynihan’s words, where the bank is applying AI tools. These include:
• AI agents, such as its Erica service. This functionality has been expanded beyond the original consumer audience to include many business side customers as well as BofA employees. The staffers use Erica for Employees to cut down on calls to the bank’s service desk for internal needs, such as password changes.
• Search and summarization, such as gathering and synthesizing internal research and market commentary for its global markets and global corporate and investment banking areas.
• Content generation, such as its use among bankers who tap GenAI to prep for client presentations and gather and analyze internal research and market commentary.
• Code generation among the bank’s approximately 17,000 software developers. Moynihan said this effort was saving 10%-15% of code writing costs.
Moynihan said the bank holds 1,400 AI patents and has created over 250 AI and machine learning models. He stressed that the bank weighed AI decisions carefully.
“It’s got to be done right,” Moynihan said. “The decisions we make are meaningful to people’s lives. … Customer’s confidence will go if you don’t handle them right.”
Read more: Risk Management, Not Regulation, Should Fuel AI Adoption in Banking
Synchrony Financial’s AI Strategy Builds Momentum
Wells Fargo Securities analyst Donald Fandetti asked management at Synchrony about its technology investments. Much of the team’s answer covered AI activities, including both internal and external uses.
“There’s a big efficiency opportunity across the company,” said Brian Doubles, president and CEO. “We can improve speed to market. We can drive costs down.”
One internal example is the launch of the bank’s own LLM, called Synchrony GPT. Doubles said all of the company’s employees can access this GenAI tool for use in their day-to-day work. Another internal application relies on GenAI tools to help contact center staff to solve customer problems more quickly.
While many banks have tended to stop short of letting their use of GenAI touch customers directly, Synchrony has introduced a tool for its customers when they want to shop for various consumer items. It launched its pilot of Smart Search a year ago. Smart Search provides a natural language hunt joined with GenAI. It is a joint effort of the bank’s AI technology and product incubation teams.
The functionality permits shoppers using Synchrony’s Marketplace to enter a phrase or theme to do with decorating and home furnishings. The AI presents shoppers with a “handpicked” selection of products matching the information entered, all of which are provided by merchant partners.
Read more: Banks Are Swimming in Data But Starving for Insights. AI Will Make Things Worse
AI Goes ‘Beyond Hopes and Dreams’ at Citizens Bank
For Bruce Van Saun, chairman and CEO at Citizens Bank, new technologies like GenAI and agentic AI are exciting, but they are one facet of a multi-faceted process.
Citizens is in the midst of its “Reimagining the Bank,” Van Saun explained. This entails rethinking and redesigning how Citizens serves customers. He said Citizens is “talking with lots of outside consultants looking at scenarios across all industries across the planet in the banking industry.”
“This requires changes to our organizational model, our underlying technology and data architecture, and imparting new skills to our colleague base,” said Van Saun. He said this process will take multiple years and promised the analysts more information on the push later in 2025.
Brendan Coughlin, vice chairman and head of consumer banking, is heading up the reimagining of the bank and has high hopes for the contribution AI will make.
“The use cases on AI are becoming a little bit more real, versus hopes and dreams,” said Coughlin. “Everything is on the table, and we are bullish on long-term value creation from AI.
Coughlin added that while the bank is hoping for some quick wins in the reimagination project, some initiatives will take longer than usual.
“We’re planting the right seeds, not just to impact things in the next year or two, but for the next three to five years,” Coughlin said.
Van Saun added that Citizens is cognizant of the pace of change in AI.
“The big banks may be spending a lot of money on doing some pioneer work,” said Van Saun. “I think there will be more ready-made turnkey solutions available that we can hopefully take advantage of.”
Read more: U.S. Bank’s Dominic Venturo: Impactful Innovation Means Thinking Ahead of Today’s Emerging Tech
Some Tout AI-Enhanced Futures, But Not Everybody
At Wells Fargo, during a discussion about expense control, Michael Santomassimo, senior EVP and CFO, said that “it’s very early to see any impact of any significance from AI.” He said the bank has adopted some use cases and was piloting others in its branches, operations system, and call centers.
“You’re starting to see some of the benefits you would think you would see come through in some of the early use cases, but it’s super, super early,” said Santomassimo.
Other institutions are further along the curve.
At Regions Financial, David Turner, senior EVP and CFO, told analysts that he anticipates that technology costs will be rising, but that a compensating factor is likely savings in other spending categories.
A key one is personnel. “The issue is, as we leverage technology, including artificial intelligence and generative AI, is how can we use those tools?” said Turner. “Over time, we will have attrition in our workforce that we won’t have to replace because we have technology that can do a particular job.”
One grunt job already being taken over by AI at Regions is prospecting for corporate business. The bank is tapping technology to screen public company securities filings to identify needs that Regions’ corporate offerings can fill.
At Zions Bancorporation, a key target for AI savings is compliance duties.
Scott McLean, president and COO, said AI has helped in cutting the costs of processing thousands and W9 forms and signature cards. He said the technology has also been helpful in reducing false positives in the anti-money-laundering and Bank Secrecy Act area.
In lending, a key benefit of AI has been using humans for higher-value tasks.
In business credit, for example, McLean said that AI enables the redirection of staff time away from gathering and organizing borrower data and toward “analyzing the data to create more revenue or reduce expense or minimize losses.”
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