BofA says AI is boosting bankers' productivity, revenue

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America plans to spend billions of dollars on technologies such as artificial intelligence to boost bankers' productivity and bring in more revenue, its chief technology and information officer said on Monday.

BofA plans to allocate $4 billion into new technology capabilities from its $13 billion tech budget, the company told investors earlier this month. It plans to use AI more widely across all its businesses.

"How many clients can a given relationship banker cover if you're able to actually automate that process using AI," such as preparing client briefing documents before meetings, Hari Gopalkrishnan, who took over the role at BofA said at the Reuters Momentum AI Finance conference in New York. "You now can have a banker cover 50 clients instead of 15. And that's exactly what we're seeing in the real world."

In wealth management, the second-biggest U.S. lender sends AI-generated market information to its financial advisers, combined with data on clients' portfolios, so that bankers can better tailor their investment advice, he said.

The bank's 18,000 developers have been using AI agents for the last year, and observed "significant gains" in productivity to automate or speed up mundane tasks, including streamlining some software tests by 90%.

"Our teams are looking at growth, and we're in the process of strategic planning for the next three years, and you see much more aggressive objectives," Gopalkrishnan said. "These tools are now taking flight."

BofA's virtual assistant, Erica, has done work for customers that would have otherwise required 11,000 employees, he said, including routine requests like ordering checks or disputing transactions.