PWC – August 2025

The adoption of artificial intelligence is accelerating at the largest and most forward-looking banks. Leaders have gone beyond establishing responsible AI governance and principles and are broadening the number of use cases. We anticipate attention will pivot towards driving the next level of operational efficiency. Leading banks are shifting from grassroots experimentation with use cases to a top-down AI strategy, identifying ways to fast-track risk and compliance reviews.

Data as your edge. AI is underscoring the importance of data as a key differentiator while also bringing to light challenges related to the quality and share-ability of data. Effective AI models need diverse, accurate and large datasets to assess risk, prevent financial crimes and develop products.

However, we are seeing data often isn’t clean, collated or organised. This impairs banks’ ability to automate operations. Banks should also focus on capturing new types of data by enabling unique and innovative service offerings.

While technology already exists to leverage existing data without significant architectural changes, thoughtful approaches will be required to bring down barriers without compromising information security controls.

“Good” data habits don’t change with AI; however, scale, completeness and accessibility are key to make data “AI ready.” Banks should continue to invest in robust systems to enable data accuracy and reinforce governance to manage data assets effectively.

The technology imperative. Many of the business processes that have already been digitised are disconnected from one another. Moreover, there is a siloed approach to how and where processes and tasks are automated.

Realising the full benefits brought by digitisation—lowering total cost of ownership, improving processing time, reducing operational risk and competing with new entrants will requires a more agile technology stack than the current proprietary systems at most banks.

To operate effectively with the new transformation agenda, banking CIOs and CTOs need to act more like venture capitalists looking to optimise partnerships with technology providers, rather than building these systems themselves.