Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) experts at financial institutions continues to grow, with banks looking to leverage digital channels and incorporate data-driven analytics into their workflows as the U.S. economy moves toward reopening.

American Express and Wells Fargo led the pack among financial services in AI-related job offerings posted in the past quarter, with the credit-card provider advertising 325 such positions, and the $1.77 trillion bank posting 300, according to data provided to Bank Automation News by IT trade group CompTIA. JP Morgan Chase also advertised 191 such positions over the same quarter.

In the first quarter of 2021, finance and insurance firms advertised more than 3,900 AI-related positions and accounted for roughly 13% of overall demand for such talent, according to CompTIA. Some of the most top positions businesses are hiring AI professionals for include: data scientist, machine learning (ML) engineer and data mining analyst.

“JPMorgan Chase is investing significantly in its AI/ML capabilities, as AI/ML presents a unique range of opportunities for data scientists looking to challenge the status quo,” Jessica Francisco, a spokesperson for the $3.03 trillion bank, told Bank Automation News.

The bank is using AI for in fraud detection, to power AI-based virtual assistants while also “investing in reskilling programs and opportunities for employees,” to be trained in such techniques.

While AI undoubtedly attracts a lot of excitement and buzz around the technology, it is more like an “offshoot or augmentation” of software development, Seth Robinson, senior director of tech analysis at CompTIA, told BAN. “Financial services have led the pack in doing its own software development,” he added.

Financial institutions also are looking to build their own AI applications because they have a better understanding of what they want the system to do. This also puts FIs in direct competition with businesses like The Home Depot and agricultural equipment maker John Deere, which are looking to expand their own AI capabilities, according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal.

Although FIs may have more complex AI-powered applications to develop, Robinson said they are “tapping into the same [talent] pool,” as other businesses, which tends to make the hiring field more competitive. In general, this also presents a choice to banks and FIs looking to hire AI talent about how willing they are to work with existing IT employees and train them for AI-related work, thereby creating room for reskilling programs like the ones run by JPMorgan Chase.

Some of the AI-related job openings advertised by Wells Fargo also mention AI’s applications for supporting work in internal audit workflows. The team “is responsible for driving innovation across Internal Audit including building continuous assurance solutions, reporting/visualizations, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics,” the job ad notes.

While Wells Fargo declined to share additional details of its AI-related hiring strategy, Roger Cabrera, a bank spokesperson, said that the bank is looking for AI -talent across industry verticals and, “business leaders and recruiters work together closely to understand how and where to acquire top AI talent.”

Tech moves from tactical to strategic

One of the notable shifts in technology hiring during the past decade, CompTIA’s Robinson said, has been the shift toward seeing IT applications as strategically important rather than a tactical ploy to manage costs. “This drives you toward relying on the technology more,” he added, noting that this was likely to keep demand growing for AI applications and associated jobs as companies pass on more of the data-driven analytics and guesswork to machine learning algorithms.

Some financial institutions are building relationships with computer science and AI programs at universities, perhaps spurred by the need to secure specialists in a competitive hiring market. Credit card issuer Synchrony Financial has been hosting “datathons” at the University of Illinois for the past few years and has hired “dozens of University of Illinois students,” Carol Juel, chief information officer told the Wall Street Journal recently.

Other leading financial institutions that have posted job openings for AI talent include Citi Bank, U.S. Bancorp and Capital One, according to first-quarter data from CompTIA.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a key automation technique for banks and financial institutions over the past year, and as the U.S. economy moves toward reopening, banks have kept their appetite for AI talent.

Current hiring trends might just be a precursor to future demand that has been pent up during the pandemic. As banks and financial institutions look to leverage AI in their workflows, there is likely to be “substantial increase [in] hiring for tech positions,” Robinson said, adding that CompTIA’s research shows cybersecurity and data science are likely to be the top fields with hiring demand in technology over the next 10 years.

“It feels like there’s a lot of pent-up demand on top of demand already outpacing” the talent supply, said Robinson.