BNY CEO: AI Signifies a 'Fundamental Leadership Shift'

At BNY, managers and staff are learning to collaborate with a new type of worker – the digital employee. 

According to Robin Vince, CEO of BNY, the company is embedding AI at the heart of its company strategy with the help of 140 digital employees. 

Each of these AI agents have a range of skills and are treated very similarly to human staff members. Robin says in an interview with Business Insider that each AI agent will “report to a human manager,” who will oversee its work and even give the agent performance reviews. 

Robin says that when a digital employee completes a piece of work, it will show the “human who’s responsible for the process” and tell them, "I've just done three-quarters of the work for you. And by the way, I did it in 10 minutes instead of what would have otherwise been two weeks."

Developing AI literacy

As company AI spending increases, many employees are hesitant to use the technology in their daily workflows. 

In fact, research from Google and Ipsos finds that only 5% of the US workforce is AI fluent – with less than half of workers using the technology in their jobs at all.  

To manage this gap as it introduces new AI capabilities, BNY has implemented AI training programmes for its employees.

As early as 2022 – shortly after ChatGPT was released – the bank set up an AI training hub to train staff on responsible AI use and encourage wide scale deployment.

Robin tells Business Insider that it has launched programmes such as this because: “We're investing in our people, because I want them to be the unlockers and users of AI.”

Building up a team

The bank has also launched an education platform called Eliza, which allows employees to build and use AI assistants for tasks like compliance, reporting and workflow application. As of late 2025, 20,000 employees were actively building agents. 

Rachel Lewis, Head of Payments and Treasury Services Operations, has shared with Business Insider that this process of building AI agents is key for improving employee familiarity with the technology. 

According to Rachel, part of her role is working alongside teams to develop digital employees – with many of the tools stemming from original ideas from staff.

“The person that came up with that idea actually gets the opportunity to build that digital employee,” She said. 

Once the technology is more integrated into a team, she says “it’s just almost having a virtual teammate as part of your group.”

Reimagining BNY

AI is playing a key role in BNY’s growth strategy. In a memo sent to senior leaders at the company – titled ‘Reimagining BNY’ – Robin said that AI was “a fundamental leadership shift, not simply a capability shift.

“It will require each of us to lean in and role-model how to engage with AI and how to harness it to solve problems.”

It was the first major bank to deploy an AI Supercomputer, which is powered by NVIDIA, and has over 125 AI-enabled solutions to increase efficiency and facilitate continuous growth. 

However, Robin does not believe that these investments will lead the company to reduce its headcount. 

He tells Business Insider: “I speak to CEOs who say, 'We're going to downsize, massively, our campus programme.’”

He asks: “Why would you do that?”

“We've got the opportunity to have young people who are pre-trained in AI, enthusiastic and be able to add to our business in different ways.”