Royal Bank Sets Up New Team to Boost AI Opportunities

By Robb M. Stewart

Royal Bank of Canada has established an artificial intelligence-forced team inside the lender in an effort to drive adoption of the technology.

The bank, the country's largest by market value and one of the biggest in North America by assets, said its new AI team will report directly to the chief executive and will work closely with business and functional teams at Royal Bank to turn high-potential AI use cases into market-ready solutions.

Royal Bank over the last decade has invested in AI, including proprietary data platforms. The bank earlier this year partnered with AI company Cohere to co-develop and deploy North for Banking, a generative AI solution for financial services. It has set a target of achieving up to 1 billion Canadian dollars (US$733 million) in enterprise value generated from AI benefits by 2027.

"With generative and agentic AI opening new frontiers for financial services, we are creating a dedicated team to leverage our core strength and data scale and partner across the business to turn potential into real value for our clients," President and CEO Dave McKay said.

The bank has tapped Bruce Ross to lead the new AI group. Ross has for 12 years been head of Royal Bank's technology and operations segment. Naim Kazmi, executive vice president of commercial, core banking and payments technology, succeeds Ross and will join the bank's group executive.

Royal Bank said that in addition to helping scale-up the biggest AI opportunities the new team will also be responsible for advancing research into emerging use cases across generative and agentic AI, while remaining focused on security, responsible AI and regulatory expectations.

Write to Robb M. Stewart at robb.stewart@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 18, 2026 09:38 ET (14:38 GMT)