Bell Bank says it is making considerable strides building its internal AI search engine intended to streamline how employees access institutional knowledge.  

The $14.8 billion bank, which began designing the search engine at the start of the year, is preparing to deploy the tool for mortgage originations, mortgage servicing and credit risk management as a start, Bell Bank Director of AI and Data Michelle Mack told FinAi News.  

The search engine stores the bank’s internal policies, procedures and guidelines, enabling employees to quickly retrieve accurate information through an AI agent, Mack said.  

Bell Bank started the project after recognizing that employees often had to dig through numerous documents to find a policy or guideline, Mack said, highlighting challenges such as:

• Information scattered across too many links;
• Excessive time spent finding an answer; and
• Outdated or conflicting guidance.  

Mortgage lending is a prime example, Mack said.  

“We have hundreds of links to different policy documents that people have to individually click on and then who knows if it’s consistent,” she said. “It also takes time.” 

Curating documents 

Bell Bank’s IT team is working with mortgage and credit risk teams to curate a repository of approved documents that are relevant to each department, Mack said. 

“If we have this governed repository that the agent goes to, you’re going to get more consistent results.”

— Michelle Mack, AI director, Bell Bank

The Fargo, N.D.-based bank plans to scale the search engine — called BellGPT — across the organization over time, including human resources, customer experience, digital solutions and desktop support, Mack said. 

“I have no doubt that it will be very extensible,” she said. 

BellGPT, built with Microsoft Copilot Studio, will receive extensive training before it becomes operational, with user feedback mechanisms and natural language query testing to ensure accuracy and consistency, Mack said.  

Other banks have developed similar search engines.  

For example, Bank of America in 2025 launched AskGPS, which was trained on more than 3,200 internal documents, allowing employees to ask questions and receive responses in seconds, according to the company.  

Goldman Sachs also launched an internal AI assistant last year. 

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