How US Bank CEOs Are Embracing AI Amongst Their Workforces

AI is being used across industries to assist workflow and change the way operations work.

Banks are the latest businesses to fast-track their AI adoption, most recently with Wells Fargo announcing a new Artificial Intelligence Lead for the company.

The financial services firm announced on 20 November that the current CEO of Consumer and Small Business Banking Saul Van Beurden will be taking on the new role.

Charlie Scharf, Chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo, said: “Generative and agentic AI will reshape competitive dynamics across every industry, and we are embracing these tools as we have embraced robotic process automation and machine learning for years.

“The past year has been exciting as our world-class technology team has led us in building the technical foundation, training over 90,000 employees, deploying AI tools to over 180,000 desktops and we are now beginning to implement use cases more broadly.”

Leadership restructuring 

Wells Fargo has also announced that the current CEO of Consumer Lending Kleber Santos will take on expanded responsibilities and serve as co-CEO of Consumer Banking and Lending alongside Saul.

The firm says they have been working closely on consumer experience for some time so “combining the businesses formally is a natural out-growth for how they work today”.

In a post on LinkedIn, Saul shared: “I’m excited to lead Artificial Intelligence for Wells Fargo, and partner with Kleber Santos as co-CEOs of Wells Fargo’s new Consumer Banking and Lending team.

“Together, we’ll deliver an even better experience for our customers and colleagues and help to shape the future of our combined businesses.”

Charlie added: “Success will be driven by business heads embracing these new technologies and rethinking their own operating models using generative and agentic AI solutions. 

“Saul will partner with our business leaders to ensure they are leading their own transformation and will be accountable to me for consistent and meaningful progress across the company.”

JPMorgan’s AI commitment 

Led by CEO Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase has also upped its AI integration strategies. The bank announced at the start of November that it will be giving employees the option to use AI to write annual performance reviews, according to the Financial Times.

Employees can use the bank’s large language model (LLM) to generate a review based on prompts they give the software - a shortcut designed to speed up the process of writing multiple reviews required.

Signed by execs including CEO of JPMorgan’s Asset and Wealth Management Business Mary Callahan Erdoes and Chief Information Officer Mike Urciuoli, a note to employees at the time of the LLM Suite introduction in 2024 said: “Think of LLM Suite as a research analyst that can offer information, solutions and advice on topics.”

Citigroup freeing up time

On a call with analysts on 14 October, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser said the company’s use of AI has saved time and allowed it to free up 100,000 hours of weekly capacity for software developers.

She added that almost 180,000 of the bank’s employees in 83 countries have access to Citi’s internal AI tools.

According to American Banker, an internal memo sent by Tim Ryan, Citi’s Head of Technology and Business Enablement, and Anand Selva, Chief Operating Officer, highlighted the need for well-written prompts and mandatory AI training for the majority of its workforce.

Received by 175,000 employees, Peter Fox, Head of Learning at Citi, told Fortune that the training mentioned in the memo “is about teaching our colleagues the possibilities of great prompting versus basic prompting to generate impactful results”.

He added that the training doesn’t take very long: “Experts can complete it in under 10 minutes, while beginners take about 30 minutes.”

With prominent CEOs, including Doug McMillon of Walmart and Jensen Huang of Nvidia, highlighting AI’s potential to reshape jobs, these banks are embracing the AI boom to help employees apply their talents more effectively than ever.