CaixaBank will invest in programmes to make more use of artificial intelligence (AI), as part of a multibillion-euro business plan announced last year.
The IT element of the bank’s two-year, €5bn Strategic Plan, known as Cosmos, leans heavily on AI technology to improve customer services and internal working.
To complete the Cosmos plan, the bank will require a larger tech workforce, and to this end, has announced a plan to add 1,000 young IT employees over the next three years, as well as 2,000 in non-IT roles.
As part of Cosmos, CaixaBank will use conversational and operational AI capabilities to assist employees and customers. “Thanks to this, the commercial service capability of banking professionals will increase,” said the bank. “In addition, customers’ digital self-service options will [also] increase, providing them with tools that will allow them to streamline their finances.”
AI will also be applied to automate business processes and transactions, the bank added, “reducing the administrative load in branches and improving the decision-making processes of the bank’s employees”.
It will also run a programme to improve access to information and data analytics in real time, through cloud data and the application of AI and machine learning.
CaixaBank has about 12 million digital customers and its own technology subsidiary, known as CaixaBank Tech. Its focus on IT is being mirrored across the banking sector, including in the UK.
In the UK, The Bank of England and the FCA have been tracking how domestic financial services firms are using AI and machine learning. The survey, published late last year, covered 120 companies. It found that three-quarters are already using some form of AI in their operations. This included all the large UK and international banks, insurers and asset managers that responded, and represented a 53% increase on the same survey in 2022.
Some of the most common early use cases for AI have been “fairly low-risk from a financial stability standpoint”, Sarah Breeden, deputy governor of financial stability at the Bank of England, said during a speech in 2024. For example, the Bank of England survey found that 41% are using AI to optimise internal processes, while 26% are using AI to enhance customer support.
Breeden said many UK finance firms are now using AI to mitigate the external risks they face from cyber attack (37%), fraud (33%) and money laundering (20%).
The survey revealed that 16% of respondents are using AI for credit risk assessment, and 19% are planning to do so over the next three years. A total of 11% are using it for algorithmic trading, with a further 9% planning to do so in the next three years.
With the rapid adoption of AI comes the threat to jobs, as roles traditionally carried out by humans are replaced by the technology. Recent figures from Bloomberg Intelligence put the number of jobs set to be replaced by AI at hundreds of thousands, with chief information officers questioned by the organisation expecting on average 3% of their workforce to be cut. About a quarter of respondents expect the workforce to be cut by between 5% and 10% as AI takes over roles, with the back and middle offices to be most affected.
But it’s not just back and middle-office jobs in banking that will disappear – people working in branches face uncertain futures in the UK as big banks shutter branches across the country.