The news: Citi mandated AI prompt training for most of its employees, per the American Banker. 

Tim Ryan, Citi’s head of technology and business enablement, noted that so far this year, Citi employees have input more than 6.5 million prompts and reduced time spent on some tasks by orders of magnitude.

Opportunity eclipses fear: An early reaction to generative AI within banks was fear. Hot on the heels of the popular release of ChatGTP in November 2022, JPMorgan Chase, for example, restricted the use of ChatGPT by employees, as did other large organizations.

But banks’ internal use cases for genAI have multiplied, and banks have become more comfortable with it. In early 2023, Citi made public a push to find uses for genAI within the bank. Now, less than three years later, Goldman Sachs launched an AI assistant firmwide, and both NatWest and JPMorgan have partnered with OpenAI: NatWest on customer support and JPMorgan for employee assistance.

Our take: Fourteen percent of financial services companies worldwide have already benefited from their investments in generative AI, per Broadridge, and another 54% expect payback in no more than 1-2 years. 

The banking industry’s pivot over the past three years from fear of the unknown to seeking benefits will pay dividends in the long run.