Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has created a dedicated AI group to drive the bank’s artificial intelligence ambitions over the coming years.

The new team will work closely with business and functional units to turn high‑potential AI use cases into market‑ready tools that deliver value for clients.

As well as helping to scale AI technology across the organisation, the group will be responsible for advancing research into emerging use cases in generative and agentic AI, while maintaining expertise in security, responsible AI and regulatory compliance.

The unit will also support RBC’s global workforce of more than 100,000 employees in 29 countries to use AI in their day‑to‑day roles. Working with HR and learning teams, the AI group will ensure adoption is aligned with the bank’s strategic goals and that employees have the training, tools and support needed to leverage the technology.

Almost 27,000 employees are already using RBC Assist and 8,000 Capital Markets staff are using Aiden, the bank’s proprietary AI assistant tools.

RBC has appointed Bruce Ross to lead the new division as group head, AI.

Ross has spent 12 years as group head of technology and operations at RBC, during which time he has built a core technology platform, led the bank’s digital transformation and overseen the complex integration of HSBC Bank Canada.

In his new role, Ross will focus on shifting AI from early‑stage experimentation to scaled deployments that deliver measurable outcomes for clients.

“RBC has spent the past decade investing in AI, including proprietary data platforms and scale, exceptional talent and world‑class security,” said Dave McKay, president and chief executive at RBC. “With generative and agentic AI opening new frontiers for financial services, we are creating a dedicated team to leverage our core strength and data scale and partner across the business to turn potential into real value for our clients.”

The bank has already launched a number of AI initiatives, including its own proprietary AI foundation model designed to provide a more personalised customer experience and enhance banking tasks.

ATOM (Asynchronous Temporal Model), developed by RBC’s research institute RBC Borealis, was trained on large‑scale financial datasets including “billions” of client financial transactions, which RBC said give it a unique breadth of knowledge in financial services.

In January last year, RBC launched an end‑to‑end AI tool designed to optimise operations and increase security in the financial services sector.

The platform, called North for Banking and developed in partnership with AI firm Cohere, provides a secure AI workspace that helps firms automate routine tasks, improve productivity and streamline operations.

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