The Royal Bank of Canada has formally created an AI Group.
Building on “existing capabilities and top AI talent,” the newly established team will report to the Chief Executive Officer, according to a statement from RBC.
The group will work with business and functional teams to turn AI use cases into market-ready solutions that bring value to clients, Canada’s largest publicly traded firm says.
It’s a natural evolution for RBC, which “has spent the past decade investing in AI, including proprietary data platforms and scale, exceptional talent and world-class security,” according to chief executive officer Dave McKay.
“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 CEO stated.
In recent times, RBC has partnered with AI company Cohere to co-develop North for Banking, an enterprise generative AI solution optimized for financial services.
The bank also joined MIT’s FinTechAI@CSAIL initiative to access early-stage AI research.
And RBC is the only Canadian bank in the top ten of the 2025 Evident AI Index, ranking third globally for AI maturity in financial services.
This ranking is driven by launches such as ATOM, RBC’s proprietary Asynchronous Temporal Model, which was last year used across 15 RBC products and processes.
The bank says it has filed more than 1,200 patents since 2019, with over half of these being related to artificial intelligence technologies.
RBC has tapped veteran tech executive Bruce Ross, who spent 12 years as Group Head of RBC Technology & Operations, to lead the new AI group.
Naim Kazmi, former EVP of Commercial Core Banking & Payments Technology at RBC, moves into Ross’ role.
AI is a “generational technology,” according to the bank’s Chief Human Resources Officer, Kelly Bradley, that “enables us to reimagine what is possible.”
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