Digital Workers Are Reshaping Financial Services as AI Tools Take on Human-Like Roles
CREtech
Thanks for keeping up with the CREtech Community in the News! For more news about members of the CREtech Community, follow us on Linkedin.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a core part of financial institutions' operations, with companies like Bank of New York Mellon and JPMorgan Chase pioneering the use of AI-powered “digital workers” to perform tasks traditionally handled by human employees. At BNY Mellon, dozens of digital employees now operate within the organization with individual logins, direct reporting managers, and defined responsibilities such as code vulnerability remediation and payment instruction validation. These AI agents function autonomously within tightly scoped environments, helping streamline workflows while maintaining data security boundaries.
Leigh-Ann Russell, BNY’s Chief Information Officer, emphasized that this marks the “next level” of AI integration, with plans to grant these digital workers email and internal messaging access in the near future. Each AI persona may exist in multiple instances but is deliberately restricted to a single team or role, reducing risk and reinforcing control. The long-term aim is to enable these digital employees to proactively engage with their human supervisors and escalate tasks that require human oversight.
JPMorgan Chase, while taking a more cautious approach, is similarly experimenting with AI tools that emulate human workflows. Chief Analytics Officer Derek Waldron described “digital employees” as a conceptual framework that helps business leaders understand the role of AI agents. Rather than replacing workers, these tools will likely evolve into personal AI assistants for every employee and AI concierges for every client interaction. Already, 230,000 JPMorgan employees have access to an internal AI chatbot, and efforts are underway to develop more specialized, autonomous agents tailored to specific job functions.
The rise of AI agents is prompting a broader reevaluation of workforce models in financial services. As Scott Mullins, Managing Director at AWS for Financial Services, pointed out, the key challenge now lies in designing the right operational model: how to integrate, manage, and instruct digital employees alongside humans. While full autonomy for AI agents is still a work in progress, the financial industry is rapidly moving toward a future where digital and human labor are deeply intertwined.
