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Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How Bank of America scaled AI
This story was originally published on CIO Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily CIO Dive newsletter. Bank of America has reached a major milestone in its AI journey: More than 90% of its 213,000 employees now leverage the Erica for Employees virtual assistant, the company said in a Tuesday announcement. The AI-powered tool was rolled out in 2020 to ease IT administrative processes when pandemic concerns drove a pivot to remote work. The company has since attributed a more than 50% reduction in IT service calls to Erica for Employees, according to the announcement. As organizations invest in emerging technologies, there are risks and — if all goes well — rewards. The progression from pilots to widespread adoption isn't automatic or assured. Development and implementation costs have to align with value. At Bank of America, the tech vetting process is grounded in practical considerations, Hari Gopalkrishnan, head of consumer, business and wealth management technology, told CIO Dive. 'We start by looking at what the customer wants,' Gopalkrishnan said. 'If you start by asking 'how can I take this cool technology to market?' you're going to spend a lot of money and it's going to fail. It has to map back to what the customer needs.' Bank of America's virtual assistant initiative began in 2018, when the company launched the first iteration of an in-app virtual assistant called Erica. The chatbot has tallied 2.5 billion client interactions since its initial deployment and now has 20 million active users, the company said. Measurable efficiency gains and user-experience improvements don't come cheap. Bank of America invests roughly $13 billion on tech annually, earmarking nearly one-quarter of that budget to new technology initiatives this year. Some of that spending supports regularly scheduled innovation sessions to workshop potential use cases. 'Teammates come together to go over what we've heard from the market, what are the cool things in tech and how we can come up with a bunch of ideas in a 48-hour cycle,' Gopalkrishnan said. 'Some of them get funded right away and some take longer.' The bank's portfolio of virtual assistants, including Erica, Erica for Employees and a pair of customized tools for its Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank units, emerged from an emphasis on deliberate innovation. 'There are many areas where we've used traditional predictive AI for years to actually deliver value, both client facing and internally,' said Gopalkrishnan. As generative AI capabilities took center stage, the bank already had processes in place to evaluate the safety, efficacy and potential value of the technology. 'There are 16 different parameters we look at to determine if a capability holds muster when it comes to responsible deployment and that has not changed,' said Gopalkrishnan. The company also has an AI oversight council to manage safety and governance. The technology's evolution, from an engineering perspective, stems from the size of large language models and the scope of their capabilities. Prior to ChatGPT, models were built from the ground up with specific functions in mind. Generative AI models are multitaskers, capable of summarization across functions and multilanguage code generation. 'The new kid in town is content-based,' Gopalkrishnan said. 'Now you get to the interesting realm of generating content, which is both exciting and, in some ways, daunting, because now you've got to worry about hallucinations.' Despite generative AI's broad potential, many organizations are struggling to register a return on their investments in the technology. As accuracy issues, safety concerns and governance complications impede adoption, the proof-of-concept process can lead to shuttered pilots. 'You can spin up something that sounds like it's cool but yields very little value to the business,' Gopalkrishnan said. 'A cool demo can end up costing you a ton of money, which is not a good outcome.' Gopalkrishnan recalls a particular technological innovation predating ChatGPT that also promised to revolutionize business processes. 'A few years ago, the world was abuzz with talk of the metaverse,' he said. 'We took a look at augmented reality, we did innovation sessions and teams came back with all kinds of cool ideas. But, early on, we realized that no customer was asking us for that.' Predictive and then generative AI coupled with natural language processing followed a more promising development curve. 'When we started our journey with Erica, we realized that real customers were having challenges navigating hundreds of features in a mobile app,' Gopalkrishnan said. 'We could see that customers actually cared about natural language processing even if they didn't call it that.' Erica's evolution helped establish a vetting framework that begins with understanding the various roles in the organization and working from there to weigh costs against value. One area that promised a return on investment in the data-intensive banking industry was coding assistants. Big banks are well positioned to reap the rewards of tools that guide engineers through legacy applications, according to Accenture. The largest industry players have moved quickly to add governance and ethical use expertise to ease the adoption process, Evident Insights found. Bank of America has already seen a 20% efficiency improvement among its coders through the use of generative AI, the company said in the Tuesday announcement. The technology was adopted with safety in mind and an eye toward ROI, according to Gopalkrishnan. 'It's not a panacea yet, but the faster we can generate valuable, meaningful code, both in terms of revenue and business initiatives that are going to take out expenses, the better we get,' Gopalkrishnan said. 'It's really for those activities that are safely reproducible.' The company's ongoing innovation push has yielded 7,400 patents and pending patent applications, more than 1,200 of which are AI and machine learning focused. While patents protect the bank's intellectual property, they can also be a moral booster. 'It's a way to reward the team for innovative thinking,' Gopalkrishnan said. 'But it also allows us to make sure people realize there's a lot of IP here and we're not flying by the seat of our pants.' 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Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI Adoption by BofA's Global Workforce Improves Productivity, Client Service
More than 90% of employees use AI-driven virtual assistant for increased efficiency CHARLOTTE, N.C. and LONDON and HONG KONG, April 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of America uses innovative technology to meet and anticipate the needs of its clients and 213,000 employees. For many years, this commitment has carried through in its approach to AI and machine learning. The technology is embedded today across the company's business lines and areas including global technology, operations, and training. "AI is having a transformative effect on employee efficiency and operational excellence," said Aditya Bhasin, Chief Technology & Information Officer at Bank of America. "Our use of AI at scale and around the world enables us to further enhance our capabilities, improve employee productivity and client service, and drive business growth." Seven years ago, in 2018, Bank of America launched Erica®, the first widely adopted AI-driven virtual financial assistant, within its mobile app. Since then, clients have interacted with Erica more than 2.5 billion times, with 20 million clients now actively using the virtual assistant. Bank of America's approach to AI includes human oversight, transparency, and accountability for all outcomes. In addition to recently shared examples of how AI benefits clients and employees, our employees' use of AI continues to expand in areas such as: Erica for Employees – Building upon Erica's success, in 2020, Bank of America launched Erica for Employees, an AI-driven internal virtual assistant which was rapidly adopted during the pandemic by employees seeking technology support in areas such as mobile device password reset, device activation, and many others. In 2023, the functionality was expanded to assist with additional topics such as where to review health benefits, locate payroll and tax forms, and over 90% of employees use Erica for Employees, with the virtual assistant having reduced calls into the IT service desk by more than 50%. The capabilities will expand this year to offer enhanced search and assistance across a broader set of topics – including answers to employee questions about Bank of America products and services – with plans to leverage both AI and generative AI (GenAI). ask MERRILL® and ask Private Banking® – Leveraging the technology behind Erica, these tools help Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank teams efficiently curate information to deliver superior client experiences. When needed, the chat functionality can also connect teams with experts at the bank for help with more complex requests. In 2024, there were more than 23 million interactions with ask MERRILL and ask Private Banking, an increase of 1 million over 2023, helping employees more proactively connect with clients about timely and relevant opportunities. Capturing client feedback – This internally-developed GenAI capability is used by Bank of America call centers to summarize call recordings, which helps increase efficiency and ensure the company remains in tune with clients' needs and improves their experiences. Previously, teammates would manually generate these summaries. Future enhancements this year will extend to other communication channels. The Academy – Bank of America's onboarding, education, and professional development organization uses AI to provide interactive coaching through conversation simulators that enable teammates to practice different types of client interactions and increase proficiency through real-time feedback. Employees completed over 1 million simulations last year, with many noting that practicing client conversations helps them deliver better and more consistent service. Additional AI deployments underway helping to increase employee productivity and improve client service include: Coding assistance – Bank of America software developers are using a GenAI-based tool to assist with code writing and optimization, through which they have experienced efficiency gains of over 20%. Preparing for client meetings – Developing materials in preparation for meetings with current and prospective business clients can take several hours per meeting. AI helps automate and standardize the creation of drafts of materials for meetings with Bank of America Business Banking and Global Commercial Banking clients, with the opportunity for employees to reallocate tens of thousands of hours per year to client engagement and growth. Contact center optimization – A modernized desktop tool leveraging AI proactively provides guided assistance to customer service specialists in Bank of America contact centers, enabling them to deliver a more personalized client experience, increase client satisfaction, and reduce call handling times. Research summaries – An internally-developed GenAI platform enables the Global Markets sales and trading team to search, summarize, and synthesize our industry-leading research and market commentary more quickly and efficiently. AI Patent PortfolioBank of America holds nearly 7,400 granted patents and pending patent applications, the most U.S. granted patents of any financial services company. More than 1,200 of these patents are AI and machine learning focused – representing 17% of the patent portfolio – and more than half have already been granted. Other technology categories in which new patents were granted last year include information security, online and mobile banking, payments, data analytics, and augmented and virtual reality. This is thanks to the company's more than 7,800 talented inventors in 14 countries and 42 U.S. states, and a culture that empowers teammates to explore and develop innovative solutions for individuals and businesses globally. Bank of America spends $13 billion annually on technology, of which approximately $4 billion will be directed to new technology initiatives in 2025. Bank of AmericaBank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 69 million consumer and small business clients with 3,700 retail financial centers, approximately 15,000 ATMs (automated teller machines) and award-winning digital banking with approximately 58 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 4 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BAC). Reporters May Contact:Matt Card, Bank of AmericaPhone: Catherine Page, Bank of AmericaPhone: View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Bank of America Corporation
