PARIS (Reuters) - BNP Paribas will continue to keep some sensitive customer data and critical operations off public cloud infrastructure despite signing a five-year cloud and artificial intelligence partnership with Google, the French bank said on Thursday.
The agreement will give BNP Paribas access to Google's public-cloud infrastructure and Gemini AI models as the bank develops AI agents for internal operations, including corporate credit memos, sales, trading, research and financial structuring.
BNP Group Chief Information Officer Marc Camus said the agreement did not represent a complete shift away from the bank's existing infrastructure.
He said signing the partnership with Google did not mean BNP Paribas would abandon its on-premise systems.
Medical information held by the bank's insurance operations was cited as an example of highly confidential data that BNP Paribas does not plan to move to public-cloud infrastructure.
The bank will also continue using open-source AI models and maintain its partnership with French AI company Mistral, with different providers being used for different applications.
BNP Paribas sees potential for Google's technology in less-sensitive operations, including invoice processing and data management.
The approach highlights the banking sector's effort to expand the use of generative AI while retaining tighter controls over highly confidential customer information and critical systems.