Banking is being reshaped by artificial intelligence, and Robin Vince, CEO of BNY, is embracing the shift. We’ll learn how America’s oldest bank is deploying AI as a leadership tool, how it is being integrated alongside human talent, and why culture, not code, remains the foundation of long-term transformation. 
Robin Vince, Chief Executive Officer, BNY 

In conversation with: Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media 

Culture Meets Code

Conferences

Thank you everybody. Thank you, Ray, and that was a great conversation. Robin, thank you for joining us. You too are a man in demand. Welcome to Davos. For those of you who don't know, BNY Bank of New York, I think you're more than 240 years old. Is that right? That's right. Great, I must say, and you, the reason I've wanted so much for you to be here is I think of all of the banks, all the financial services institutions, you are well down the road on AI to the point where I don't even think you talk about it as AI. You just talk about outcomes at this point. Give us a sense of how you did it and let's start with the fact that you now have digital agents as employees. I think that's fascinating. Yeah, well, it's great to be with you and thank you for the question, Diane. So the way that I think about AI, we view it as the most transformational technology in frankly, hundreds of years, maybe since the real commercialization of electricity. It's got that order of magnitude. It's really intelligence leverage in the same way that machines have been. Providing mechanical leverage for a long time. And so with that determination, it's critical that we've got to be a full participant, enjoy the full benefit, the superpower that we can give all of our people, and that's really how we think about it. So AI for everyone, everywhere, for everything is our mantra at BNY. So with that mindset, it really becomes a cultural question about how do we create full adoption and integration of AI because the technology is already at a level where it can provide. Incredible capabilities. True for all of us individually, true for institutions, true for governments as well. And so therefore how you bring it into the environment is key. Culture matters. We're a culture first firm and that's really what we've been focused on. So we have tried to enlist our people to pull AI towards them. It's not the enemy. I understand it can be perceived as scary, but it shouldn't be scary because it's actually a helper, can make us smarter, can make us go. Faster and so we built a platform, Eliza, and within that platform it's multi-genic. We leverage all of the general intelligence models, but you're right, not only have we built agents, we've built multi-agent solutions, and some of them we've wrapped with some additional capabilities so they can behave in our environment a little bit like an employee. We call them digital employees. They are digital employees. Well, let, let me, since we're talking USA House, let's talk about the culture of the US because I want to tie it back to A lot of the conversations in Davos right now and questions about the US and where it's going on innovation. What's your thoughts on that? Well, look, innovation, I mean it's one of the stories of the US. The US has welcomed over the course of 250 almost years, the best and brightest of the world to come to the US to be able to thrive and be successful, and it really is a beacon for people because it creates an environment where entrepreneurs can thrive, where people can. Hopefully live the American dream. Obviously that's a big topic of discussion at the moment in the US to make sure that prosperity can be broadly shared because that is very important and it was one of the original principles of America. But for us, this innovation and this constant desire to push forward has been a great backdrop for our company as we've been innovating. That's how you get to be old. You get to be old through having great people and great culture. Through being resilient, which means you have to be a prepper for things that can go wrong, being resilient means thinking ahead, being ready for the unexpected sometimes, and of course innovating, not trying to pretend that the world's going to stay the same because it doesn't. Now the words financial and innovation sometimes have gone together in ways that don't always have happy results. I'm thinking of 2008. What's What's different this time, because AI is one of the areas where I think finance, healthcare, where the data is so important you can't have hallucinations. Tell me a little bit about how you think about just the security environment and ethics and all the other factors that you have to think about as a as a bank, right? Well, financial product, uh, sort of innovation and transformation, that's kind of a different thing these days. We're really a financial services platforms company. We provide technology. We provide enablement really for the global financial system, but you're right, uh, we're a trusted brand, trusted institution. Client trust is. Really important to us. You've got to look after the things that are precious. That means intellectual property, it means our facilities, our people, but most of all, it really means our client data and all of the things that we do for our clients. And so we really engineer to those outcomes. The world's a dangerous place. There are a lot of threat actors out there. AI can be used for bad things as it can be for good things. So it has been and continues to be a real priority for us. You're right though that AI also Has to be done right because if you're sloppy about AI, sloppy input, sloppy output. Let's personalize this a second because I know for example your CTO Leanne Russell has a digital twin. Every night she comes home, she downloads maybe conversations with you to her twin, and that twin is now basically restructuring her week. What are you doing yourself as CEO to be ahead of the curve on AI just tactically? Well, you know, there's the world. Of inside BNY and then there's the world outside as well. I use AI quite extensively. I use it to whether I'm trying to make a decision like a shopping decision or something like that. I actually can also use it as a coach. I asked my AI for feedback as well, and not dissimilar to the way that Leanne uses it. If you're a regular prompter on an AI application, you know, I challenge you to just go to AI and ask it to give you constructive feedback and actually tell you how it grades you on how. You are as an AI user. I did that. It helps to make, helped to make me better. Can you give us some sense? I know we just, our time is winding down here. What should we be talking about this time next year with regard to BNY? Take us a little bit on the journey because as I said to those of you who don't know, it's well acknowledged that you are further along than many of your cohorts. Well, you know, our story has been a company of an incredible longevity, great period of time, success. Over a long period of time, but about 3 years ago we decided that we looked deeply at ourselves. We decided that we had all of these terrific businesses, these capabilities, this great client reputation, but we weren't making the most of it, and we determined, resolved that we were going to do it. Our financial performance over that 3 years, really delivering more for customers, turning up as one company, bringing our people along on the journey again. It's culture to us that's really led to a terrific reimagining of the firm. We had a. last year, record revenues, record net income. It was a real year of records for us, and we just reported our earnings recently. On the back of that, for the next 3 year chapter of our reimagination, we see AI playing a big role. It's AI plus the magic of our human employees together delivering for customers. That's what I'd expect us to be talking about. Well, here's to more digital employees. Here's to more innovation. Robin, thank you very much for joining us.