BNY CEO Warns Human Inertia is Biggest Risk to AI Progress
Artificial intelligence is evolving faster than the human systems built to manage it - and that gap, not technology itself, may be the biggest obstacle facing financial institutions, according to BNY CEO Robin Vince.
Speaking Tuesday at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas, Vince warned that “human adoption and culture and potentially organizational inertia” could slow the impact of AI, even as its computing power doubles roughly every 100 days.
“The real question isn’t what AI can do,” he said. “It’s how fast humans are willing to adapt to it.”
Vince described AI as a transformative force already embedded across BNY. “My mantra on this is, AI is for everyone, everywhere, everything at BNY,” he said.
The bank launched its proprietary AI platform, Eliza, in 2024 to streamline employee workflows, enhance client service, and embed AI-driven efficiency across its operations.
Since then, around 15,000 employees have built their own AI agents for specific tasks, and the firm is developing more than 150 AI-powered tools to solve challenges across the organization.
BNY is also extending AI literacy beyond its walls, recently launching training programs for community bankers.
Roughly 1,000 BNY employees have already received more than 40 hours of AI instruction, according to Vince, who said the aim is to “stretch the boundaries” of what employees think is possible.
“On day one, people might do a few simple ChatGPT queries,” he said. “Before long, they’re designing digital colleagues, solving customer problems, and deploying AI in completely new ways.”
That creativity, he added, fuels enthusiasm across the organization. “They can create a flywheel of excitement associated with AI adoption - feed it with training and tools, and it becomes a very powerful thing.”
Vince framed AI as the latest chapter in BNY’s long relationship with technological change. “We got our first computer 70 years ago, moved to electronic transactions 50 years ago, and started using the internet 30 years ago,” he said. “If you stick your head in the sand and ignore the technology of the day, you’ll become obsolete. History is littered with firms that did exactly that.”
The CEO also drew parallels between AI and the bank’s embrace of digital assets. In 2022, BNY became the first U.S.-based global systemically important bank to custody cryptocurrency. It now holds Circle’s USDC, SocGen’s CoinVertible, and Ripple’s RLUSD.
Vince described the move as a natural extension of BNY’s custodial mission. “If there’s going to be more stuff in the world, we want to look after it,” he said. “We are the world’s largest looker-after of stuff.”
He added that blockchain and distributed ledger technology offer enormous potential to reimagine the infrastructure of the financial system itself.
“We see it as an opportunity to reinvent the processes that underpin finance,” he said. “When you make money move faster and more efficiently, you create liquidity - and that liquidity attracts new market participants.”
For Vince, the message is clear: technological change cannot be resisted, only harnessed. “AI will reshape every function of the bank,” he said. “The challenge now is making sure the people who run it are ready to evolve just as quickly.”