The news: Canada’s Big Five banks recently held their annual meetings, in which AI implementation and outcomes took center stage.

Trendspotting: AI was framed first as a productivity tool for employees. Executives emphasized time savings on work like summarizing documents, drafting emails, and compiling research. The overarching message is that experimentation has turned to implementation.

• CIBC noted how AI enables fraud detection and credit monitoring. It has moved an employee AI pilot to a firmwide launch.
• TD has piloted genAI in contact centers and engineering. It also said AI has cut reviews of its mortgage approval process down from hours to minutes.
• Scotiabank links AI adoption to broader modernization and is rolling out assistive AI tools to employees.
• RBC has created a group that aims to accelerate the lender’s AI transformation.
• BMO has opened the BMO Institute for Applied AI & Quantum to further develop its AI use and explore quantum computing capabilities.

Zoom out: Regulatory hurdles, high costs, and slower tech adoption have limited banks’ early use of agentic AI, as we discuss in our October 2025 report GenAI and Agentic AI in Banking 2025. Agentic is the next evolution of genAI, but is still nascent: Only 16% of banks worldwide have deployed agentic AI use cases, per a May 2025 MIT Technology Review Insights report, and they have primarily been for fraud detection and risk and compliance.

Implications for banks: Now that banks have implemented AI strategies, they need to assess whether they’re keeping pace with emerging risks. Regulators, financial institutions, and industry groups are increasingly concerned that advanced AI could enable cheaper, more scalable cyberattacks; accelerate the discovery of vulnerabilities; and lower the barrier to entry for cybercrime. These concerns have prompted high-level discussions, including a meeting of the Canadian Financial Sector Resiliency Group shortly after US bank CEOs and regulators convened to assess the threat posed from AI models like Anthropic’s unreleased Mythos.