Dive Brief:
- Citigroup is furthering its AI goals through the launch of Arc, a platform for building and scaling agents across the business, as it looks to automate manual tasks such as research and client preparation work, the bank announced Thursday.
- Arc will initially be used by Citi developers to build agents for specific internal use cases, according to the announcement. Access to the platform will expand over time, and employees will see agents added to everyday workflows to surface deeper insights from data, reduce repetitive tasks and streamline workflows.
- “For the first time, we can deploy embedded AI agents at enterprise scale across every business line, every geography, every function,” CTO David Griffiths said in a video announcing the platform. “The real game changer is that we’ve built industrialized infrastructure to make AI agents a core part of how we serve our clients.”
Dive Insight:
Banks are advancing AI agents in the enterprise this year, with firms including BNY and Morgan Stanley already building and deploying their own.
Nearly 6 in 10 banking executives believe AI agents will be fully embedded in risk, compliance, and audit functions, as well as fraud detection and transaction monitoring, within the next three years, according to Accenture’s Top Banking Trends for 2026. Another 56% expect the technology to be broadly adopted in “know your customer” functionalities, credit assessment and loan processing.
Morgan Stanley’s wealth management business is developing several AI agents to automate routine tasks, freeing up employees to spend more time with customers, Jed Finn, head of wealth management at Morgan Stanley, shared during a conference earlier this year. Meanwhile, BNY employs AI-powered digital employees, including digital engineers that fix low complexity code.
Citi’s Arc platform builds on moves the bank has made to bolster its foundation, the announcement said.
In a Q1 2026 earnings call last month, CEO Jane Fraser highlighted the company’s modernization efforts and described how the company is looking to deploy AI to increase revenue, improve client experiences and drive process improvements. The bank appointed former Google executive and financial services IT veteran Brian Saluzzo as CIO, effective in March, to help the bank further scale AI.
The bank is already preparing employees for greater AI use, noting in its Arc release that more than 80% of the bank’s 180,000 employees with access to Citi AI tools regularly use the technology. Most employees have also completed prompt training to better understand how to gain the most value from the technology, according to the announcement.
