While banks have long employed artificial intelligence tools, a new survey shows that a majority of banks globally have either deployed or are in the process of deploying generative AI tools. According to a survey of more than 400 banks worldwide conducted by Hanover Research for bank technology company Temenos, 11% of financial institutions have already implemented genAI, while an additional 43% are in the process of doing so.
Larger banks were more likely to have genAI live or in the pipeline; 79% of banks with over $250 billion in assets and 75% of banks with $50-250 billion in assets reported this. About 4 in 10 financial institutions with less than $10 billion in assets said the same. Of banks that are implementing genAI, 64% said it was primarily to improve customer experience, 58% said it was to enhance their customer service functions and 55% said it was to improve internal productivity.
Who oversees the AIs?
Forty-two of respondents said that had a dedicated group within the bank overseeing genAI implementation. Banks with a dedicated group were most likely to designate the chief information officer or the chief security officer as the individual responsible for genAI adoption, although 8% of financial institutions said they had created a role of “chief AI officer” to participate in the governance of genAI — although none of these were in the United States. Virtually all banks reported that it took less than 12 months to obtain internal approval for genAI projects, “which is pretty fast for the banking sector,” noted Temenos chief marketing officer Isabelle Guis, speaking at the Temenos Community Forum in Madrid.
Bankers’ willingness to adopt genAI comes in light of anxiety about falling behind the competition. Eight in 10 said that banks that do not implement AI will fall behind their competitors, while 6 in 10 said they expect human employees to work alongside AI employees as so-called agentic AI tools are expanded.
Banks to increase tech spend in key categories
Respondents reported that they plan to expand their investment in several key technology areas, including customer protection (84%), efficiency improvements (81%), systems integration (75%) and data analytics (73%). “We really expected banks to be more conservative, to be honest, based on the climate,” said Guis in an interview. “What was surprising is that, actually, their planned investment levels are set to increase.”
Guis noted that 57% of banks reported plans to spend to increase their agility in responding to market changes. “U.S. banks were monitoring their customers and how they responded to the geopolitical change, keeping it in mind to help them,” she explained. “They’re expecting the customers to be more conservative in their investments. They’re expecting some behavior of the customers to change, and they want to be ready with new offerings.”
