NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Wells Fargo has created a generative AI council within the organization to study implementation, development and deployment of gen AI.

Steve Hagerman, chief information officer of consumer technology at Wells Fargo, said today during Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 that the bank’s gen AI council consists of five bank leaders:

• People officer;  
• Head of digital strategy;
• Head of technology; 
• General counsel; and 
• Chief operating officer.  

With the council, the $1.7 trillion bank is ensuring that it is getting “diverse perspectives on the gen AI use cases that we’ve put in place,” Hagerman said. The bank is more than happy to explore gen AI implementation to automate repetitive tasks, he added. 

However, “if it’s reasoning and making decisions on behalf of a customer, we’re less ready to do that,” Hagerman said, noting that the bank will not deploy gen AI for such tasks until governance is put into place for them. 

The San Francisco-based bank’s virtual assistant, Fargo, recently became capable of observing a customer’s behavior and teeing up repeated decisions made by a customer in order to seek approval before executing a transaction, Hagerman said. 

He explained, giving the example of a customer paying for a monthly service; if the customer skips a monthly payment, Fargo will tell the customer it has lined up the payment, which will only be processed upon authorization.  

The bank is also looking to work with regulators to inform and educate the regulators on how gen AI is being implemented within the bank’s operations, Hagerman said.