As companies zero in on returns from artificial intelligence investments, Bank of America Co-President Jim DeMare said Wednesday there’s a deeper concern beneath mounting questions on the pace of capital spending by large companies. 

“The question was really getting at, are we going to see returns quickly enough?” DeMare said during an appearance at a BofA Securities conference.  

AI spending in financial services has soared, giving way to rising pressure around returns on investment. Consulting firm Accenture found only 20% of bank leaders are seeing widespread, sustained value from AI initiatives, pointing to scale challenges.

Thus far, the most measurable AI returns are found within technology units, such as with software development and coding, BofA’s DeMare said.

Across most industries, AI is boosting coding productivity about 15% to 20%, he said, and that’s the gain BofA is seeing as its 20,000 software developers use coding agents to optimize the development process.  

“That's clearly identifiable,” DeMare said. Tapping capabilities of the bank’s AI-powered virtual assistant Erica to handle internal self-service has also led to a considerable reduction in help desk inquiries at the bank, he added. BofA has said Erica handles the work of about 11,000 people. 

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender expects to double its expense budget for AI next year, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said last week at a Barclays conference appearance. About 140 uses have been implemented, “at a cost of $400 million, generating a benefit of $800 million,” Moynihan said. 

As he noted AI benefits, the CEO said the $3.5 trillion-asset bank’s headcount has dropped from about 213,000 employees at the beginning of the year to 209,000, Moynihan said. BofA’s attrition rate is about 8.5%, he said.  

“We're not laying off anybody. We don't have to do that. All we do is just manage the hiring carefully,” Moynihan said.

DeMare mentioned Wednesday “one of the biggest risks to implementation of AI is people being fearful of it and thinking that it's going to replace them.”

“That's not unique to AI,” he added. “It's apparent every time we try to use new technology.”

About 95% of the company has access to AI tools, which has increased familiarity and comfort, DeMare said. “Then it's about general productivity, and how is it improving their life at work, and how is it improving workflows,” he said. 

The bank is assessing third parties, looking at a variety of providers that could bolster automation with AI, as well as considering more complex and custom possibilities, DeMare said.

Bank of America has also turned to employees to solicit ideas on how AI could make their jobs easier. In sifting through those, “ROI is very much a part of the decision-making process,” said Hari Gopalkrishnan, the bank’s chief technology and information officer.

BofA seeks employees’ best ideas, and “as we tag them for AI, it's turning out that our level of AI investment interest is actually more than twice what it was last year,” Gopalkrishnan said in an interview this week. 

“We will probably end up spending twice next year [what] we did this year because they're just good, rich ideas that are now starting to create the return on investment for us,” he said. 

The bank spends about $4 billion on new tech initiatives each year, with AI being part of that.

“Our view is, well, if they've got all these ideas with revenues and expenses, then we ought to be able to invest more to give them that value. It happens to be that AI is now increasingly a part of the solution,” he said. 

Thousands of employees are now using AI-powered customer relationship management tools that arm an employee with data and talking points in advance of a conversation with a client, he said. 

The next AI-related question Gopalkrishnan is mulling: the level of autonomy the bank is comfortable giving agents.

“As these models get more efficient and effective, we will want to, over time, expand the autonomy, but we'll want to do that in a way that the guardrails are omnipotent,” he said. “We're not going to do anything until such a time that we have the appropriate guardrails.”

More concerns have been raised around the ability of humans to control AI agents as they advance, but Moynihan emphasized that the lender takes a responsible approach with AI and employees are held accountable for AI-generated information they may use.   

“The risk, for us, was really the risk of letting it start giving answers without humans checking to make sure the answer was right, both just common sense, but also literally making sure it's right,” Moynihan said last week. 

“If you give a wrong answer to a client, the client's going to walk out on you,” he said. “That will gate its application in some ways.”