BNY CEO's Vision for Business with AI and Digital Employees

At BNY, a quiet transformation is underway.

Managers and employees are learning to work alongside a new kind of colleague – a digital one.

Under the leadership of CEO Robin Vince, BNY is placing AI at the centre of its long-term strategy.

Around 140 AI-powered agents are already embedded across the organisation, each designed with specific capabilities that mirror the responsibilities of human staff.

These AI agents are not treated as abstract tools but as operational contributors.

Each one reports to a human manager, who oversees its output and even conducts performance reviews.

This structured approach reflects a broader trend in enterprise AI adoption, where intelligent systems are increasingly integrated into workflows as accountable, measurable assets.

Robin describes how these digital employees are transforming productivity.

When an AI agent completes a task, it communicates directly with its human counterpart, explaining its contribution and time savings.

As he notes that the agent might say, "I've just done three-quarters of the work for you. And by the way, I did it in 10 minutes instead of what would have otherwise been two weeks".

Closing the AI skills gap

As AI becomes more embedded in enterprise environments, a key challenge remains – workforce readiness.

Despite growing investment, many employees are still hesitant to incorporate AI into their daily work.

Research from Google and Ipsos highlights the scale of the issue, with just 5% of the US workforce considered AI fluent and fewer than half actively using AI tools in their roles.

To address this, BNY has made AI literacy a priority.

The bank established an internal training hub as early as 2022, shortly after the launch of ChatGPT, to educate employees on responsible AI usage and accelerate adoption across the business.

Robin explains the rationale behind this investment: “We're investing in our people, because I want them to be the unlockers and users of AI.”

This focus aligns with a wider industry shift, where organisations recognise that the success of AI initiatives depends not just on technology, but on how confidently employees can engage with it.

Empowering teams to build AI

Beyond training, BNY is enabling employees to actively shape its AI ecosystem.

Its internal platform, Eliza, allows teams to create and deploy their own AI assistants for tasks ranging from compliance to reporting and workflow management.

By late 2025, around 20,000 employees were already building AI agents through the platform.

For Rachel Lewis, Head of Payments and Treasury Services Operations at BNY, this hands-on approach is central to building familiarity and trust in AI systems.

She highlights how innovation often begins at the grassroots level, with employees identifying opportunities and developing solutions themselves.

“The person that came up with that idea actually gets the opportunity to build that digital employee,” she says.

As these systems become embedded within teams, the dynamic begins to shift.

Rachel says: “It’s just almost having a virtual teammate as part of your group.”

From an AI perspective, this democratisation of development reflects the growing importance of low-code and no-code platforms in scaling enterprise AI adoption, allowing non-technical users to participate directly in innovation.

AI at the core of business transformation

AI is not simply an operational tool at BNY. It is a central pillar of the bank’s transformation strategy.

In a memo to senior leaders called Reimagining BNY, Robin framed AI as a leadership challenge as much as a technological one.

“It will require each of us to lean in and role-model how to engage with AI and how to harness it to solve problems,” he says, adding that it represents “a fundamental leadership shift, not simply a capability shift”.

The bank has backed this vision with significant infrastructure investment, becoming the first major financial institution to deploy an AI supercomputer powered by NVIDIA.

Alongside this, it has introduced more than 125 AI-enabled solutions aimed at improving efficiency and supporting continuous growth.

Despite the scale of this transformation, Robin does not see AI as a driver of workforce reduction.

Instead, he views it as an opportunity to augment talent and attract a new generation of AI-ready professionals.

“I speak to CEOs who say, 'We're going to downsize, massively, our campus programme.’”

He asks: “Why would you do that?”

“We've got the opportunity to have young people who are pre-trained in AI, enthusiastic and be able to add to our business in different ways.”

In this evolving landscape, BNY’s approach offers a clear message for AI leaders.

The future of work is not about replacing people, but about redefining collaboration between humans and intelligent systems to unlock new levels of innovation and resilience.