Scotiabank accelerates AI use to boost productivity and better manage risks

Bank of Nova Scotia says artificial intelligence is boosting its employees’ productivity and strengthening key programs, including its anti-money laundering (AML) detection system.

“AI capabilities … are enhancing employee productivity in practical, responsible ways across our organization,” Tim Clark, the bank’s chief information officer, said in an email.

He also said AI is also allowing employees to respond to client needs faster and strengthen “key risk-management capabilities like customer record validation, AML detection and compliance monitoring.”

Canada’s Big Six banks are looking for ways to increase their use of AI to boost productivity and earnings. For example, it helped Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce save 1.2 million hours of work in its first quarter and cut mortgage approval times at Toronto-Dominion Bank, the lenders’ chief executives said in April.

That same month, Royal Bank of Canada chief executive Dave McKay said the lender created a new AI group that reports directly to him and the bank aims to deliver up to $1 billion in AI-driven enterprise value by 2027.

Bank of Nova Scotia on Wednesday said its employees will be able to “apply AI in practical ways across their day-to-day work” after giving them access to new tools such as Notebooks, which reviews documents, creates summaries and creates content that might otherwise take hours to prepare.

“Our focus remains on empowering our teams with a wide array of leading-edge tools that can drive tangible impact with our employees and the clients we serve,” Phil Thomas, the bank’s chief strategy and operating officer, said in the statement on Wednesday.

Integrating AI into the daily workflows will also help people build new skills and new ways of working, chief human resources officer Jenny Poulos said.

“Through thoughtful training, practical resources, and a strong focus on responsible use, we are helping Scotiabankers use AI with confidence in their everyday roles,” she said in a statement.

Although the banks are increasingly relying on AI, the country’s top banking regulator is urging financial institutions to better understand and manage the technology’s potential risks.

Peter Routledge, head of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, has said the emergence of Anthropic PBC’s Mythos — an AI model that reportedly excel at exploiting software vulnerabilities — is a signal point for the financial system to “put on our thinking caps and our glasses” to understand what risks artificial intelligence poses.

The industry needs to “really understand what’s coming at us, because it’s coming at us pretty fast,” he said at an April event.

• Email: nkarim@postmedia.com