AI Spend Leaders: Banks vs. Insurers

For this issue, FinScale has ranked the top 7 banks and 8 insurers by their intensity of AI adoption. The list blends disclosed spend, enterprise-wide rollouts, and measurable impact. The result isn’t just who’s spending the most, but who’s turning dollars into productivity and trust at scale.

Top 7 Banks — AI Leaders

1. JPMorgan Chase

• Tech budget: ~$17–18B; hundreds of AI use cases live.

• Reported $1–1.5B+ in productivity and efficiency gains from AI.

• Major domains: asset management (Coach AI), trading, fraud prevention, software engineering copilots.

2. Bank of America

• 2025 tech budget ~$13B, with ~$4B earmarked for AI.

• Tools: “ask MERRILL,” “ask PRIVATE BANK,” internal copilots.

• Erica expanded into an employee-facing productivity engine.

3. Goldman Sachs

• “GS AI Assistant” rolling out firmwide to 10k+ employees.

• Use cases: document summarization, drafting, data analysis.

• Engineering copilots in production with GitHub and Gemini tools.

4. Morgan Stanley

• Pioneer in advisor-assistants powered by OpenAI.

• Expanding into meetings, client support, and compliant workflows.

• Strong early mover advantage in wealth management AI.

5. Citigroup

• 30,000 developers equipped with genAI coding tools.

• 2024 tech budget ~$11.8B, modernizing trading infra and tokenization pilots.

• Core play: developer productivity and modernization.

6. Wells Fargo

• “Fargo” virtual assistant has logged 245M+ interactions.

• Taking a model-agnostic, cautious approach to generative AI.

• Focused on trust, digital service, and gradual expansion.

7. RBC (Royal Bank of Canada)

• Dedicated AI & Digital Innovation team within Capital Markets.

• Building “North for Banking” platform with Cohere.

• Targeting C$1B contribution from AI by mid-decade.

Top 8 Insurers — AI Leaders

1. UnitedHealth Group

• Over 1,000 AI use cases live across Optum and UnitedHealthcare.

• Prior authorization, claims integrity, and clinical documentation in production.

• Launched Optum AI Marketplace for healthcare partners.

2. CVS Health / Aetna

• $20B earmarked over 10 years for digital/AI consumer health.

• “Aetna Care Paths” guiding members through personalized navigation.

• Guardrails: no AI for diagnosis or denial decisions.

3. Allianz

• “AllianzGPT” adopted by 60k+ employees globally.

• Boosting productivity through summarization, drafting, and knowledge search.

• Strong emphasis on employee training and responsible AI.

4. AXA

• “AXA Secure GPT” built on Azure OpenAI.

• Global rollout for content generation, translation, and code.

• Clear focus on data protection and compliance-first adoption.

5. Cigna Group

• New generative AI assistant for members.

• Use cases: provider matching, benefits Q&A, care coordination.

• Evernorth unit leveraging analytics for operational efficiency.

6. Elevance Health (Anthem)

• CEO-led mandate to “simplify experiences” with AI.

• Generative AI deployed in admin tasks, personalization, and analytics.

• Taking a cautious but committed scaling path.

7. Prudential plc

• Google MedLM powering claims summarization.

• AI Lab in Singapore leading responsible AI pilots.

• Exploring sales enablement and agentic AI for distribution.

8. Chubb

• Scaling AI in underwriting, claims, and service.

• Investing in in-house copilots and exploring LLMs.

• Focus on underwriting analytics and claims automation.

Banks vs. Insurers: Different Playbooks

Banks are leaning hard into engineering productivity and client-facing copilots. JPMorgan, Goldman, and Citi are investing in AI assistants for developers, traders, and advisors. Their aim is speed to market and sharper decision-making.

Insurers, by contrast, are focused on claims, care navigation, and compliance guardrails. UnitedHealth and CVS are scaling AI into core operations, while Allianz and AXA emphasize safe rollout across global teams. Their mandate is efficiency plus trust.

Insights & Themes

• Explicit Spend: BoA’s $4B AI budget line and CVS’s $20B decade-long bet show AI is no longer hidden in IT—it’s a declared priority.

• Enterprise Penetration: JPMorgan, Allianz, and Goldman stand out for firmwide adoption of assistants.

• Responsible AI: AXA, Prudential, and Elevance place compliance first, signaling that safe adoption is now a competitive edge.
  
  
  

Pull Quote
“AI spend isn’t just about dollars. It’s about who can turn those dollars into trusted productivity at scale.”

The FinScale AI Leaders Index

Banks: JPMorgan, BoA, and Goldman are top tier.
Insurers: UnitedHealth, CVS, and Allianz lead their sector.

Expect M&A and partnerships (Morgan Stanley + OpenAI, RBC + Cohere, Prudential + Google) to accelerate innovation. The leaders are pulling further ahead not by experimenting, but by embedding AI across the enterprise.

Leadership Checklist

For BFSI executives, here are the questions to take back to your boardroom:

1. Do we have a clear AI budget line, or is spend buried in IT?

2. Are AI tools embedded across the workforce, or isolated in pilots?

3. How are we measuring ROI—cost savings, revenue, or customer satisfaction?

4. Do we have trust guardrails in place before scaling adoption?

5. Are we partnering strategically to accelerate learning and scale?

The line is clear: AI in financial services is no longer experimental—it’s operational. The leaders are not just spending at scale, but embedding AI across the enterprise with guardrails in place.

The next phase won’t be measured by raw spend. It will be judged by AI-powered returns—faster onboarding, sharper underwriting, and measurable productivity at scale.