AI development has traditionally been reserved for specific coders with advanced training, but with generative AI, financial institutions can look to citizen coders.

According to research and advisory group Gartner, citizen developers, or citizen coders, are employees of a company, in this case banks, that innovate outside of the traditional IT setting.

Gartner stated in 2021 that by next year, 80% of technology products and services would be built by professionals not trained in technology.

“Growth in digital data, low-code development tools and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted development are among the many factors that enable the democratization of technology development beyond IT professionals,” Rajesh Kandaswamy, former distinguished research vice president at Gartner, said in the 2021 Gartner release.

Today, at Scotiabank, citizen coders see the value of innovating at their leisure on AI projects that could “impact their day-to-day,” Grace Lee, senior vice president and chief data and analytics officer at Scotiabank, said at Sibos 2023 Wednesday in Toronto.

“Generative AI has opened up, and made more accessible, the idea of coding and interacting with AI,” she said. “We have a lot more citizen coders now, we have a lot more people who feel comfortable with the topic.”

More meaningful productivity is something that citizen coders are willing to invest in, she said.

While Lee is not immediately focused on the products that citizen coders create, she is invested in the transformation AI is presenting in the bank’s overall culture, she said. Generative AI will be “a remarkable tool for transformation and for change, management, adoption and just getting more citizen coders,” she said.