Big AI spenders are reaping large productivity gains

American Banker's 2026 AI Talent Shift Survey

How is AI adoption impacting institutional workforces?

Key takeaway: More than half of respondents said AI has had a positive impact on their organization's workforce, bringing efficiency gains with it.

The adoption of AI across financial services promises widespread enhancements to business functions, but has also fueled worries of tech-driven layoffs.

Roughly 64% of respondents said AI has had a moderate to significant impact on their organization's workforce, while 28% said the technology has only had a minimal impact and 5% said it had no impact at all. Three percent were unsure.

More than half of bankers (54%) said the impact of AI on their organization's workforce has been positive. Roughly one-third (36%) said it's still too early to tell what the impact of the technology will be, 22% said no impact and 3% said AI has had a negative impact. A further 3% were unsure.

For AI adopters, improved efficiency (28%) was the No. 1 impact named by respondents. Close behind was role augmentations (12%), followed by enterprise-wide use (8%), back-office automation (5%), workforce reductions (3%) and decreased morale (1%).

The attention surrounding worries of jobs being outmoded by AI has grown exponentially in recent years, with firms like Block and Bolt announcing widespread layoffs due to the use of AI.

Some bankers predict that while many clerical jobs will be eliminated, a greater number of new AI-oriented jobs will also be created.

Surjit Chana, a board member of Beneficial State Bank, a Harvard fellow and tech committee member at the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, told American Banker that roles across the organization are exposed to AI at varying degrees, but willingness to upskill is an important insulating factor.

"The workers most exposed to displacement are those in routine administrative and clerical roles who often lack the financial buffers, professional networks and transferable skills to navigate the transition," Chana said. "The workers least exposed can be the ones who least need the protection if the transition isn't actively managed with genuine investment in reskilling, honest communication and workforce impact assessments."

How AI can play a role in employee productivity

Key takeaway: Those who spent more on AI in the last 12 months saw the greatest gains in employee productivity.

Banks and credit unions doubling down on investments in AI are seeing productivity improve almost in lockstep with the level of funding.

When looking at changes in AI spending over the last 12 months, respondents that upped their investments reported higher levels of productivity increases depending on the degree of change. 

Roughly 60% of those whose organizations upped AI spending by 25% or more reported moderate to significant increases in productivity. For those in the 10% to 24% AI spending increase category, 40% had notable increases in productivity. About 16% of those who increased investments by less than 10% reported moderate productivity improvements. Roughly 20% of those who kept AI spending constant said their departments had moderate to significant productivity improvements.

Broken out by department, wealth management or investment banking had the greatest share of respondents who said productivity moderately to significantly improved over the last 12 months (45%). Close behind was corporate/commercial (40%), followed by payments (36%), retail/small-business banking (33%) and lastly risk, legal or compliance (26%).

At an institutional level, national banks and community banks (38% and 37% respectively) saw a similar level of respondents who said productivity has changed moderately to significantly in the last 12 months. Regional banks (29%) and credit unions (26%) were also close.

For now, most banks are using AI in an assistance capacity, offering suites of tools for frontline employees and back-office executives alike. But that trend could change this year.

Stephanie Ferris, president and chief executive of FIS, told American Banker that banks are entering a "generational moment in financial services" as AI adoption continues to skyrocket. Those with the "strongest data networks, deepest customer relationships, most resilient infrastructure and the regulatory expertise that took decades to build" will be the ones to lead in the long term, she said.

"Banks enter this new moment in a position of strength, with excess capital, stable credit and strong operating performance. … AI adoption is accelerating rapidly, and institutions recognize it's not a future opportunity, it's a competitive imperative today," Ferris said.

What's behind improved employee productivity at banks?

Key takeaway: AI integration is the top factor behind improved employee productivity, according to survey respondents.

Among a majority of respondents, the addition of AI is the leading factor behind improved employee productivity.

For 41% of respondents, AI integration was the top factor believed to be the driver of improved employee productivity over the last 12 months. Improved efficiencies internally (34%) was second, followed by new tech and tools (25%), task automation (23%) and process simplification (17%).

Across the past few years, especially in the wake of President Trump's innovation-first executive order on AI, banks and credit unions alike have been spurred on to integrate new machine learning tools into their tech stacks. From the largest institutions to some of the smallest, many are taking advantage of the regulatory environment.

JPMorganChase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said in February that the bank plans to increase spending by $9 billion this year, with AI being an area ripe for investment. He noted that 150,000 JPMorgan employees use its internal large language model each week, and they have said they save four hours per day from the technology.

But Dimon said that while AI will most likely lead to an increase in productivity, it could be a threatening presence for consumers who are laid off across the U.S. 

"Laying those people off will cause a problem, even if it creates more productivity in society," Dimon said. "And that's why society has got to think this through a little bit. It may happen faster than we can adjust to it … and therefore, we should be prepared."

The effect of AI on departmental responsibilities

Key takeaway: The integration of AI has not just improved productivity, but expanded the capabilities and functions of various departments.

About 75% of respondents who upped AI spending by 25% or more reported that their department's capabilities expanded to some degree in the past 12 months, while 7% said capabilities decreased over the same period of time.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents who upped AI spending by 10% to 24% reported expanded capabilities within their department, versus 1% who said capabilities were reduced. 

Among those who only slightly increased their AI spending, 47% reported expanded departmental capabilities. Forty-four percent of those who didn't change AI spending said they saw capabilities expand.

As AI is tasked with handling menial roles like customer support and document aggregation, bankers are finding themselves free to undertake new functions beyond the scope of their current departments.

Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs executives outlined efforts to incorporate Anthropic's Claude AI into its trade accounting and client onboarding verticals in  a play for efficiency. While other banks like JPMorganChase and Bank of America provide employees with AI tools to assist with day-to-day tasks, having models handle operational duties is a bit more novel.

"The beauty of neural networks is the fact that they can reason like a human in those micro use cases, and therefore they complement a rules-based system into something that actually can get you really close to 100%," Marco Argenti, chief information officer at Goldman, told American Banker.

What's behind expanding departments at banks?

Key takeaway: AI adoption and the addition of new technology have both played a hand in the expansion of departmental capabilities.

AI adoption (27%) and the addition of new technology (27%) were both top factors behind the trend of departments expanding their capabilities, followed by efficiency gains (21%) and strategy shifts (19%).  

The introduction of new AI tools has lightened the workload of both frontline employees and back-office talent, allowing them to redistribute time toward more intense tasks or wholly new ones.

For example, leaders at Bank of America say that the organization's virtual assistant Erica is currently handling the work of 11,000 people, ranging from IT questions to client preparation.

"We've been at the game with Erica for seven years, now with 20 million regular users and two million interactions with Erica a day," Holly O'Neill, president of the bank's consumer, retail and preferred lines of business, told American Banker.

Unlike models used by JPMorganChase and Morgan Stanley, which are new generative AI iterations of the technology, Bank of America's Erica uses natural language understanding and predictive analytics to handle queries.

"We intentionally did not go large, because we would have spent a ton of money on training and using inferences when the reality is the problem statement isn't about a large language model," Hari Gopalkrishnan, chief technology and information officer at Bank of America, told American Banker. "The problem statement is: Understand short bursts of text — no one's going to type in an essay on that chatbot screen — map it to a set of clear intents and go execute them."