Scotiabank CEO Scott Thomson says artificial intelligence saved his bank roughly 24,000 days’ worth of work over about four and a half months. At TD Bank, CEO Raymond Chun recently said AI has reduced the time it takes to pre-process mortgages from about 15 hours to three minutes.
Canada’s Big Five banks employ nearly 400,000 full-time-equivalent workers. That’s more than double the number of employees in Canada’s auto assembly and parts manufacturing industry. TD Bank workers alone outnumber Canada’s active military force.
According to a study by Toronto Metropolitan University, 98 per cent of financial sector workers are highly exposed to AI technologies. That’s far higher, they say, than the 56 per cent estimated for the Canadian workforce overall.
Last month, the Bank of Canada estimated that one‑third of jobs may “undergo substantial changes” because of AI integration, given today’s capabilities. The central bank found that banking, insurance and other financial clerks are among the most exposed.
“AI is a big opportunity for us, a transformational opportunity both from an effectiveness, and an efficiency perspective,” Thomson said on Wednesday at the annual Scotiabank Financials Summit in Toronto.
His enthusiasm is shared by his C-suite peers.
“There isn’t a part of our business that’s not being impacted by AI,” RBC CEO Dave McKay told an audience at an industry conference hosted by his bank earlier this year. At an event in June, he spoke about using AI every morning to generate custom reports based on RBC’s internal data.
Last month, BMO CEO Darryl White said predictive AI modelling in his bank’s insurance business can make underwriting decisions in as little as 10 seconds. The industry standard is at least 28 days, he noted.
Stock market analyst John Aiken covers the banking industry for New York-based Jefferies Financial Group. He sees top executives at Canada’s Big Five — Royal Bank, TD Bank, Bank of Montreal, Scotiabank, and CIBC — brimming with excitement over the billions of dollars they’ve invested in AI in recent years.
What’s unclear, he said, is how rank-and-file bank employees will feel the impact.
“This isn’t a little pet project,” Aiken told CBC News. “The funny thing is, it’s the CEOs themselves that are bringing it up unprompted.
“Strangely enough, we’re not seeing head count reductions from the banks. You’re presumably going to see lesser demand for lower skilled workers … the front-line staff at the branches.”
Questions about how AI will affect some of Canada’s largest private employers come amid a much broader debate over how the technology could shape humanity as a whole.
Earlier…
Read More: Canada’s big banks embrace AI as workers face job uncertainty
