Dive Brief:
- Global banking firm HSBC named generative AI a key technology investment area during its Q4 2025 earnings call Wednesday. The financial services firm is scaling AI adoption across employee assistance, end-to-end process reengineering and customer experience, executives said.
- “If you ask me, ‘Where is the biggest investment going into the new technology today,’ it is definitely going into generative AI,” HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery said during the call.
- The financial services firm said 85% of its employees have access to generative AI tools to become “future-ready,” Elhedery said. The company is also assessing how the technology can help redesign 50 processes, including fraud detection and credit applications, and has rolled out tools in areas like contact centers to help improve customer experience.
Dive Insight:
Banks tapping into AI share a strong focus on redesigning processes, supporting employees and improving customer experiences.
Banks are planning an average of $133 million in AI investments over the next 12 months, according to a KPMG AI Quarterly Pulse Survey. More than eight in 10 survey respondents said they expect to continue investments regardless of their ability to measure immediate returns.
Swiss banking giant UBS said it plans to leverage the technology to redesign front and back office processes and improve services, UBS Group CEO Sergio Ermotti said during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call earlier this month.
“We are investing in a portfolio of large-scale transformational AI programs designed to increase our operational resilience, enhance the client experience and unlock higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness across the organization,” Ermotti said during the call.
Meanwhile, TD Bank implemented roughly 75 AI use cases in 2025 targeting loan underwriting, creating intelligent leads and deepening customer relationships, according to Raymond Chun, group president and CEO of TD Bank Group. The financial services firm is prioritizing AI investments in customer acquisition and insights, as well as risk management, he added.
This year, TD Bank plans to focus its AI use cases on reimagining “end-to-end processes,” Chun said. Agentic AI in particular can “truly transform operations,” Ted Paris, SVP, head of analytics, intelligence and AI at TD Bank U.S., previously told CIO Dive.
HSBC is considering generative AI tools to help redesign banking operations and to improve data processing.
“The result of which is a more productive bank, more efficient bank and a safe bank with stronger controls,” Elhedery said.
HSBC is also already seeing productivity gains among employees due to generative use, Elhedery said. Coding assistance tools for engineers have resulted in “five times faster patching of code, patching of vulnerabilities,” he said.
Elhedery also anticipates “customer experience will be materially enhanced” as they deploy generative AI tools to further personalize and tailor customers’ banking journeys.
