Banks embrace AI, but need to show tech is benefiting bottom lines, report finds — SkimNews
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- Evident's AI report ranked Canada's five biggest banks in the top 30 of 50 global financial institutions across AI talent, innovation, leadership and transparency.
- Royal Bank of Canada held third place globally for the fifth consecutive year and cited more than 200 AI models in production alongside a 500%+ jump in LLM token consumption in its fiscal Q3 ended July 31.
- Toronto-Dominion Bank climbed to 10th, Bank of Montreal placed 20th, CIBC 21st and Scotiabank 30th in the same ranking.
- JPMorgan Chase took the top global spot and disclosed roughly US$1.5 billion in realized AI value in 2025, while Capital One finished second without publishing a company-wide financial figure.
- Only about 1% of the 50 ranked institutions disclosed direct cost savings from AI, and just 12 of 50 reported a realized or projected return — up from 8 the prior year, per Evident.
- RBC is targeting $700 million to $1 billion in AI-driven enterprise value by 2027; TD hit $195 million of its $200 million revenue goal in the first nine months of fiscal 2026 and raised its medium-term target to $500 million in both revenue and cost savings; BMO expects more than $1 billion in pre-tax earnings from AI by 2030.
Why it matters: Canadian banks sit near the top of the global AI leaderboard but trail peers in proving it on the income statement: it took until 2025 for any of the top-ranked names to publish hard numbers. RBC, TD and BMO have now put internal targets on the table — $700M–$1B by 2027, $500M in revenue plus cost savings, and $1B pre-tax earnings by 2030 — meaning the next two fiscal cycles will be the moment lenders either convert AI spending into reported earnings or face investor pushback.
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