JPMorgan Chase and Capital One are winning at AI banking — and their lead is getting bigger
The artificial intelligence race in the banking sector is picking up speed, with the top performing financial institutions integrating the new technology at twice the rate of rivals.
That’s according to Alexandra Mousavizadeh, founder and c0-CEO of Evident AI, which authors an index that evaluates 50 of the largest banks in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific based on public data relating to AI adoption. Evident AI’s index scores the institutions based on talent, innovation, transparency, and leadership.
While all 50 banks in the index have ramped up their adoption efforts since last year, the top 10 are improving twice as fast as the rest of the field, Evident found in its latest iteration of the index published last month.
“The leading banks in the index — JPMorgan and Capital One — are doubling down their efforts,” Mousavizadeh said in the latest episode of Quartz AI Factor, a new series set at the Nasdaq MarketSite. “And that means that they’re hiring more aggressively, they are pulling every innovation innovation lever in the bank, like research and patents and partnerships with hyper-scalers, and going through and using lots of vendors to accelerate that AI implementation.”
“They’re very clear in terms of what they’re doing,” she added. “Also in terms of how they communicate what they’re doing and how it’s expected to hit the bottom line. And they’re very strong on the transparency of responsible AI.”
Since Evident began ranking banks early last year, the top four banks have remained in their same spots as they continue to set the standard for AI adoption in the industry.
Leading bank JPMorgan had been investing in AI for years before the chatbot craze took hold with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. The financial institution hired its head of AI research, Manuela Veloso, in 2018, and has since grown its AI use cases to more than 400.
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Daniel Pinto, JPMorgan’s chief operating officer, said in September that the bank is expecting to see almost $2 billion in returns from its investment in the technology this year, particularly related to fraud prevention.
And Mousavizadeh expects more banks to begin putting dollar signs on the returns they’re seeing from AI as more use cases come into production and companies feel more of a need to show investors where the money is going.
“Towards the end of 2025 and sort of beginning of 2026, we’re going to see real sort of ROI coming through real value being added to the bottom line of the banks,” she said. “And I think therefore we’re also going to see many more banks talking about the impact that their AI investment is having on the bottom line. Not only because it’s actually really coming through, but also because there’s a pressure from shareholders and investors to actually hear how this is being crystallized.”
But she doesn’t expect banks to stop at AI. With the growing desire, and need, for the latest computing capabilities, Mousavizadeh believes quantum computing will become the next frontier as banks try to scale up their offerings — and defend against bad actors that could use advanced technology to carry out cyberattacks and fraud.
“The banks are very much at risk with anyone who has quantum capabilities,” she said.
Watch the latest episode of Quartz AI Factor above.
