Global bank HSBC $HSBA (+0,31%) and Mistral AI have announced an agreement that they say will spread the use of generative AI across the financial institution, saving staff time and improving processes.
In a statement announcing the multi-year agreement, the financial details of which were not disclosed, both companies said the bank will have access to Mistral AI's commercial models, including future developments.
The $65.9 billion bank said it would combine its "strong in-house technology capabilities" with the French LLM developer's expertise "to enhance current AI initiatives through self-hosted AI models running on HSBC's internal technology systems".
The use of AI platforms could "help client-facing teams to quickly deliver tailored communications" and "enable marketing teams to run hyper-personalized campaigns". The bank is also considering the use of AI to improve the financial analysis of complex and document-intensive customer lending or financing processes.
In a prepared statement, HSBC Group CEO Georges Elhedery said: "The partnership will provide our colleagues with tools to help them innovate, simplify their daily tasks and free up time for our clients." The collaboration is the latest in a series of plans announced by global banks to signal their intention to adopt generative AI.
Bank of America $BAC (+0,4%) for example, has announced plans to invest billions of dollars in technologies such as AI to boost employee productivity and generate more revenue. It has told investors that it has earmarked $4 billion in its $13 billion technology budget for new technologies such as AI.
Hari Gopalkrishnan, Bank of America's chief technology and information officer, said relationship managers could serve more customers by using AI for tasks such as preparing client briefings before meetings. "One banker can now serve 50 clients instead of 15. And that's what we're seeing in practice right now."
In October, the British Lloyds Banking Group promised $LLOY (+1,38%)promised to continue using "digitalization" to drive forward a branch closure program. It had invested £3 billion over three years and £4 billion over five years in transformation, much of which had gone into technology and cyber security, it told investors.
It said it had already made savings of £1.5 billion and promised to look for further ways to reduce manual back-office processes.
In July, the NatWest Group announced $NWG (+2,18%) announced a five-year collaboration with AWS and Accenture to improve its analytics performance for customer data and make better use of AI and the cloud.
The bank said it was preparing to "consolidate disparate data streams into a single, bank-wide data platform enabled by AI".
