Last month, The Royal Bank of Canada has announced the creation of the AI Group, a newly established team that will accelerate the bank’s AI ambitions over the next several years. Leading this charge is Bruce Ross, Group Head of AI, who is focused on turning AI’s potential into real value for clients. In this interview with Traders Magazine, Ross shares how the team plans to scale AI across banking, wealth, and capital markets.
Why have you created a standalone AI Group, rather than continuing to embed AI within existing business and technology units?
RBC is uniquely positioned to capture the potential of this generational technology because we were so early in the AI space, with the launch of our Borealis Research Institute in 2016. The foundational AI and data work we have established since then is why we have consistently ranked in the top 3 among 50 global banks in the Evident AI ranking for four straight years. Now, with generative and agentic AI opening new frontiers for financial services, we decided it was time for a dedicated team, with a leader reporting to the CEO, in order to leverage our core strength and data scale and partner across the business to turn potential into real value for our clients.
What projects do you have in the pipeline for this Group?
We’re well into our AI journey with products already in production – NOMI Insights for online banking, Aiden for Capital Markets, our Lumina data platform, and ATOM, our large transaction model. We have several use cases in the pipeline for both individual businesses and enterprise use including credit modelling, code development and other disciplines that are procedural in nature. Some of our biggest AI transformations will be in areas that keep our bank safe like fraud, cyber security and quality testing, allowing us to be more proactive than reactive.
How will the AI Group help transition RBC’s AI initiatives from early-stage projects to scaled client solutions?
We are listening to our business leaders who are telling us what they need to take things to the next level and achieve scale for their businesses. Building on years of investment, existing capabilities and top AI talent, we will serve as an accelerator, leveraging our core strengths in data scale and security to help turn their ideas into scaled client outcomes. We’re moving beyond incremental improvements to transform how we serve clients with generative and agentic AI.
How will the Group prioritize AI investments across retail banking, wealth management, capital markets, and operations?
We work closely with business leaders to understand their priorities and focus on the highest-potential use cases. In areas like advice centres, credit modeling, and insurance claims processing, we’re building on existing exploration to achieve scale. Our foundational capabilities—exceptional talent, unparalleled data scale, and world-class security—deliver value across all lines of business. The AI Group will be jointly accountable along with the business and functional teams for the technical delivery of AI solutions and will leverage its skills and best practices to ensure quality of design effectiveness while striving to meet the security, responsible AI and regulatory expectations.
How will the AI Group balance speed-to-market for generative and agentic AI tools with risk management, regulatory compliance, and reputational concerns?
Client privacy and data security have always been a top priority for us and have never been more important. RBC is mindful of the risks around the use of AI and we have invested heavily in governance frameworks that let us explore, build, and bring generative AI tools to market safely while meeting regulatory expectations. To that end, we have formalized a set of responsible AI principles for our development and deployment of AI models, which are designed to ensure that high standards of accountability, fairness, privacy and security, and transparency are upheld in all the bank’s AI efforts.
How will the Group prepare RBC’s workforce of more than 100,000 employees across 29 countries for AI-driven workflows? And what does meaningful reskilling and role redesign look like in practice?
Our employees are our greatest asset, and we believe that AI can help us achieve our global ambition to serve millions more clients than we do today with the team and resources we already have.
AI is a generational change and like all major tech shifts, current jobs will change and new jobs will be created. As an employer, we have a responsibility to prepare our people for change. This means equipping them with AI tools suitable for their roles, boosting our AI training capabilities so they can learn and helping managers and leaders assist employees through the transition.
The capabilities of AI are vast and we have committed to implementing it broadly into our day-to-day work, processes, product development and success measures. That being said, we recognize the unique and special contributions of human relationships in many of our business areas and we have always seen AI as a tool that can enhance and augment the work of our people, liberate them from mundane tasks and where we need to, create new roles and mandates for people.
We currently have more than 35,000 employees using RBC Assist, our in-house genAI tool, 9,000 Capital Markets employees using Aiden, and 4,000 developers using genAI-enabled development tools.
Which roles or functions are most likely to be transformed first by AI adoption?
We’re already seeing impact across multiple areas. ATOM, our proprietary model, is used across 15 RBC products and processes. We’re improving credit performance with early warning signals, enabling advisors to deliver personalized advice at scale, and enhancing trading through Aiden’s deep reinforcement learning. Procedural processes like code development are being transformed, along with fraud detection and cybersecurity.
Looking three to five years ahead, what would success for the AI Group mean beyond financial returns?
Success means helping clients lead better lives and shape their own banking experiences. We’ll simplify and digitize interactions—saving time, enhancing security, adding convenience and value, and reducing financial anxiety. Our focus remains on understanding our clients better and delivering exceptional experiences.
