Skip to Content News Archives Economy Energy Oil & Gas Renewables Electric Vehicles Mining Commodities Agriculture Real Estate Mortgages Mortgage Rates Finance Banking Insurance Fintech Cryptocurrency Work Wealth Smart Money Wealth Management Investor Personal Finance Family Finance Retirement Taxes High Net Worth FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials More Innovation Information Technology FP500 Podcasts Small Business Lives Told Tails Told Shopping Financial Post Store Obituaries Place a Notice Advertising Advertising With Us Advertising Solutions Postmedia Ad Manager Sponsorship Requests Classifieds Place a Classifieds ad Working Profile Settings My Subscriptions Saved Articles My Offers Newsletters Customer Service FAQ News Economy Energy Mining Real Estate Finance Work Wealth Investor FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials HomeFinanceBankingRBC’s McKay says he's using AI every day to help reshape how he runs the bankCEO says customized AI tool provides him with key insights and helps him be more efficient with his team You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.Dave McKay, chief executive of Royal Bank of Canada, during a fireside chat in 2025. Photo by Brent Calver/Postmedia filesThe head of Royal Bank of Canada says he spends an hour every morning reading a report generated by a customized artificial intelligence tool that provides him with key insights and helps him be more efficient with his team.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorIt’s a part of Dave McKay’s newly designed office that includes a suite of AI tools that relies on both internal data from the bank and external data.“Instead of sending an email at night asking (my team) to produce a report, getting that report a week later, digesting it and calling them about the answer, I get that report in about four seconds,” he said at a Bloomberg event in Toronto on Tuesday. “It’s built on our data and, obviously, an LLM (large language model) searching the entire universe of information.”Breaking business news, incisive views, must-reads and market signals. Weekdays by 9 a.m.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Posthaste will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againCanada’s Big Six banks have been trying to increase their use of AI to boost productivity and earnings. RBC has said it wants to get up to $1 billion in AI-driven enterprise value by 2027.Last week, Bank of Nova Scotia said it was using AI to strengthen key programs, such as its anti-money laundering detection system. In April, Toronto-Dominion Bank chief executive Raymond Chun said using AI had cut down reviews of its mortgage approval process to minutes from hours and it was also sending auto-loan decisions within seconds to clients at dealerships.The move to invest more in AI has come at a time when the country’s top banking regulator has urged financial institutions to better understand and manage the technology’s potential risks.In April, Peter Routledge, head of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, said the emergence of Anthropic PBC’s Mythos — an AI model that reportedly excels at exploiting software vulnerabilities — is a signal point for the financial system to “put on our thinking caps and our glasses” to understand what risks artificial intelligence poses.McKay said RBC’s AI model allows him to get insights on things such as the macroeconomy, consumer behaviour and the mortgage business. He said the “incredible amount of internal and external data” gives him unique insight that he eventually takes back to his team.“I still invariably call my team and say, ‘Hey, the model told me this … does that seem intuitively right?’” he said. “For me, the model adds value and it leads me to ask, ‘What should we be doing differently?’ so it shortens the conversation.”But McKay said he doesn’t see the bank’s increasing reliance on AI leading to staff cuts. Instead, he expects AI to increase capacity, reduce processing speed and allow RBC to get more customers. RBC currently serves 17 million people and its goal is to increase that to 25 million.“Most of the deployment of our AI models now are not cost takeouts in the back office; they are revenue enablement models, adding more customers, making our frontline more efficient and more effective,” he said. “That’s where we put our focus because we want to grab another eight to 10 million customers through this.”However, McKay said about 30 million Americans and about two million Canadians are set to retire in different job sectors in the coming years and there aren’t enough trained people to replace them. As such, companies will have to be more efficient.“Our view is that we will be more efficient, we will maybe need less people, but a lot of that’s coming through attrition and through demographic change,” he said. “We need these tools.”McKay also said the push for AI and emerging technologies in space and satellites is driving an insatiable appetite for all forms of capital debt and equity.“It’s driving a huge amount of not only debt, bank-to-bank debt, syndicated bank debt, but also certainly high-yield issuance and an equity issuance, so we’re using the full capital stack already to satiate this short-term demand,” he said. Get the latest from Naimul Karim straight to your inbox Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.