Digital banking service provider Finastra is advancing its AI strategy with the launch of an AI center of excellence, to boost platforms and product innovation. 

The launch comes as financial institutions shift from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide deployment, requiring more structured governance and execution, Chris McClellen, senior vice president and group head of AI at Finastra, told FinAi News. 

McClellen will lead the company’s AI center of excellence and will be responsible for implementing AI within the organizational and embedding Finastra’s products, according to Finastra’s March 17 release. 

“We’ve been leveraging AI … across engineering, product, operations and customer-facing offerings,” McClellen said. “The challenge wasn’t a lack of innovation; it was that it was happening in pockets.” 

The center of excellence is designed to unify those efforts, standardizing frameworks, scaling successful use cases and ensuring regulatory compliance, he said. 

“It gives us a way to connect the dots, so we’re not just experimenting in silos, but scaling what works, applying it consistently,” McClellen said. “It’s about moving from activity to impact.”  

Rather than centralizing control, the center of excellence operates as a hub supporting distributed product, which helps teams implement AI, McClellen said.  

“It’s less about centralizing control and more about connecting and scaling what already works,” he said.  

The initiative reflects growing demand from banks for practical AI applications.  

“The question is no longer if they should use AI, but how to implement it in a way that’s practical, secure and compliant,” McClellen said.  

AI development, use cases 

Finastra uses third-party large language models, including Anthropic and OpenAI, and is considering a hybrid approach eventually, he said. 

Internally, AI tools are already improving engineering cycle times and offering deeper insights to sales teams. The London-based company has deployed gen AI in: 

• Coding and testing;  

• Chatbots for customer support; and  

• Lending assistance. 

The center of excellence is focusing more on customer-facing AI, building on existing capabilities, McClellen said.  

“Internally, we’re leveraging AI through a combination of proprietary tools and our partnership with Microsoft to help teams move faster, improve development workflows and make more informed decisions,” he said. 

For example, tools like Operator Assist are streamlining processes by surfacing insights for risk management in real time, he said. 

The eventual success of the AI center will be defined by deeper integration into product workflows, he said.  

AI centers of excellence gain traction  

FIs are serious about developing accurate AI functions and operations, and installing chief information security officers to reap its benefits, Arjun Wadwalkar, senior product manager at Global Payments, told FinAi News. 

“Banks and FIs that are pouring a lot of capital into the technology want AI to have its own department for proper implementation and accountability,” Wadwalkar said. “It is a tech renaissance for many, and FIs believe that centralizing the tech can yield better results.” 

Other financial institutions that have created AI centers of excellence include:  

• Academy Bank, deploying gen AI to enhance internal workflows and employee productivity; 

• BNY, rolling out AI-driven digital workers and scaling enterprise AI platforms; 

• Citizens, using gen AI to improve customer service and operational efficiency; 

• OakNorth, applying AI in credit underwriting and portfolio monitoring; and 

• Lloyds, expanding agentic and generative AI across customer and internal use cases. 

Register here for the FinAi Lending Summit, set for Oct. 7-8 in Las Vegas.