00:00You're sitting in exactly the right place to talk about technology and AI. This is our cyber technology and operations
00:05command center and remain here for our clients. We're really looking at everything that BNY does with our clients and
00:14helping them and wrapping our security around all of their assets, all of their data, because at the end of
00:21the day, we touch so much of the world's financial assets and data that being secure, being resilient is incredibly
00:28important.
00:29And that's really table stakes. And this is one of our command centers. We really monitor all of that. So
00:35you're very much in the nerve center of BNY right now. Now, you're right. I think these days to be
00:42in the world of AI, to be a good CEO, you have to be very, very thoughtful about what's happening
00:49in technology, because once upon a time, there was probably a world of running a company and then having engineers
00:56think about how to drive technology forward in the company.
00:59Those two things now are much more inextricably linked with each other. We view AI as probably the most disruptive
01:06technology with some of the greatest opportunity that we've seen in our generation, probably for several generations.
01:13And so being at the forefront of that, thinking about how can AI really infuse our company, the depth as
01:21well as the breadth in service of our clients.
01:23So all the work that we've done over the course of the past three years in repositioning, reimagining BNY has
01:31now brought us to the point where culture and the whole team can help us with the implementation of AI.
01:35We're also partnering, of course, with our clients. We want to deliver better technology, better services, better product, more responsive,
01:44more efficient, quicker.
01:45We just onboarded some customers a few weeks ago in seven minutes in something that would have otherwise probably taken
01:52us seven weeks.
01:53So the speed of our ability to deliver for customers is changing. And it's also a team sport with the
01:59AI industry, partners that we use, the big LLMs.
02:04We've built a platform inside the company. It's called Eliza. And we're connected to all of the general intelligence models.
02:11And we're also, we've created this ecosystem where we can plug other people's agents into our ecosystem and actually unplug
02:20our agents into others' ecosystems.
02:22So collectively, using the very best of what's available in AI, joined up with BNY data and our customer prowess
02:30and being able to push forward.
02:31We are doing this interview on a day where there is a lot of tension in the Middle East. I
02:36am curious about what sort of measures were already in place here in BNY to make sure that there was
02:41continuity in transactions, continuity in services, given the potential disruption of some financial operations overseas.
02:49Well, resiliency is something that's always about preparation. And it's the work that you do ahead of events that ultimately
02:56makes the difference.
02:57And this is, again, another team sport. The whole of BNY is about bringing our people together, joined up, and
03:04thinking about what might happen in the future.
03:07Risk management, I used to be a risk manager. And as a CEO, you're always in the risk management business.
03:14What could go wrong? What could happen?
03:16And then the preparation and deliberate work to be able to prepare for those eventualities. Some of that is wasted
03:22effort because some of those things you prepare for may never happen.
03:25But by trying to cover as many of the bases as you possibly can, you're ready for more different events.
03:31And then when clients need help, we're there to be able to support them.
03:35And we have many clients who look to us very specifically as a company because of our resilience to be
03:41able to help them through difficult times.
03:43People have cyber attacks. People have disruptions in their businesses. And we can actually help our clients go through some
03:50of those.
03:50But you have to be humble about resilience because it's always about preparing for what might happen, the unexpected, and
03:57remaining, as a team, always focused on being ready.
04:00Since you joined the bank and took over as CEO five, six years ago, you put a big emphasis on
04:05increasing the amount of money that you spend on technology.
04:08Right now, I think something around 19 percent of your revenue is going to technology spending.
04:13That's probably the biggest share on Wall Street right now. Do you plan to increase that?
04:18Well, look, I think it's a sign of the types of businesses that we're in because one of our biggest
04:23investments is technology because we're in the business of data.
04:27We're in the business of being able to provide straight through capabilities.
04:31And so in some ways, delivering our technology to customers is kind of what we do.
04:36We're not in the investment banking business or the retail business.
04:39And so the nature of our products requires us to be heavily invested in technology.
04:45Now, I think what we're seeing at the moment and what we'll probably continue to see over the course of
04:50the next few years as AI really rolls through the ecosystem is that we can actually do more with our
04:57investments in technology.
04:59Because AI is such a huge efficiency leverage in technology.
05:03We can write code quicker. We can write it more efficiently.
05:06We can do things that used to be prioritized below the line that maybe we weren't able to get to.
05:11And now we can actually do them because we've got more capacity.
05:14So I don't necessarily see it increasing, but what I see is the productivity of our spend being able to
05:20grow.
05:21Have you articulated that to investors?
05:22There's been a lot of talk about the amount of money companies are spending on AI infrastructure and everything associated
05:28with it and the inability to articulate an actual return on investment.
05:31Is that the proper way to look at it within BNY?
05:34I think for us, I would look at it in a few different ways.
05:38The investment in AI is going to create efficiency in the company.
05:42Now, for us, efficiency means more capacity.
05:45We would love to be able to do more things without having to grow our headcount and our expense space.
05:51And AI in that respect is a gift.
05:53We can actually increase our productivity, which gives us more capacity to be able to do more to serve our
05:58clients.
05:59That's one vector.
06:00The second vector, which is very important, is about infusing AI into the products to be able to make them
06:07better, more knowledgeable, being able to look around corners, present answers to customers before they even know that they have
06:14the question, being able to speed the insight into action.
06:19And AI is doing all of those things.
06:20We have 160 AI solutions in production.
06:25We have 140 digital employees who've joined the workforce over the course of the past year.
06:30And that's at a point where we now expect that to accelerate even further, to be able to allow us
06:35to do more.
06:36And then the third vector is actually just what does AI enable you to be as a company?
06:42Are there things that you could do that you previously couldn't do?
06:44Are there businesses, there are opportunities maybe to approach new products that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to do?
06:51So I view it as all three lenses.
06:53You talk about your digital employees.
06:54You've spoken about them in the past.
06:56These aren't people, as you said.
06:58These are basically what?
07:00They're agents?
07:01Is that the way to think of them or something?
07:02They're multi-agentic solutions, and so our approach to AI is built up by having a series of different agents
07:09trained.
07:10Think about them as very specialist trained capabilities that work together to pursue a task.
07:16A little bit how a human would operate.
07:18A human doesn't just have one skill.
07:19They have multiple skills.
07:20And so bringing those multiple skills together and then bundled in the form.
07:25And the difference between a solution and a digital employee for us is with a digital employee, we add some
07:31additional things.
07:31We add a login ID, we add email, we add the ability to be part of our corporate directory.
07:37They have managers.
07:38And so as a result of that, our people can collaborate with digital employee team members and actually use them
07:46as they might another more junior member of the team.
07:49And so it's a different way of operating in our environment.
07:52We view both as quite important.
07:54And so we will take care of them.
07:55We're not as good.
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