#238: How a 700-Person Bank Is Using AI to Build Apps, Agents, and Digital Employees

From The Artificial Intelligence Show Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput

A smaller bank replaced a $375,000 software contract by building its own tool, and now runs named "digital employees" that answer tickets, review its websites, and message staff in Teams. This is what an AI transformation actually looks like inside a regulated institution.

CTO John Kowal joins Mike Kaput to unpack Peapack Private Bank and Trust's journey since 2023: flipping build-vs-buy, giving every AI agent a name and personality, building a network of 29 AI champions, and the guardrails that keep AI in check in banking. Part of the AI Transformations series, presented by Google Cloud.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:06:02— What PPAC Private Bank and Trust does

00:07:41 — How the AI transformation started

00:10:24 — What's driving PPAC from chat to agents

00:12:09 — Concrete examples of AI changing daily work

00:16:23 — Re-engineering workflows, not just layering on tech

00:17:25 — The technology stack powering the work

00:19:24 — The data warehouse foundation and OpenAI + Microsoft ecosystem

00:24:14 — How AI champions surface use cases

00:25:30 — Measuring impact and ROI

00:27:39 — Lessons learned and what comes next

00:32:09 — Why PPAC gives its digital employees names

00:34:18 — How the CTO role and tech team are changing

00:35:59 — Competing with larger banks

This episode is presented by Google Cloud:

Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.

Learn more about Google Cloud here: https://cloud.google.com/

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