The fourth edition of the Evident AI Index, an outside-in benchmark for AI in financial services, finds banks are rapidly expanding AI deployment and beginning to show clearer commercial outcomes – but not evenly.

While most institutions are making progress, a small cohort of leaders is widening the gap and converting investment into measurable results.

Evident, which benchmarks 50 of the world’s largest banks across North America, Europe and Asia using more than 70 indicators, says its independent approach relies solely on publicly available data to produce a comprehensive assessment of AI maturity. The fourth Index builds on reports first published in January 2023 and is intended to increase transparency around how banks are actually adopting AI.

Leaders extend their advantage

Evident’s scoring system measures each bank’s maturity across four pillars – leadership, innovation, talent, and transparency – to assess how well they’re embedding AI at scale. Forty-seven of the 50 banks improved their overall AI maturity score year-on-year, with the top ten performers improving by an average of +7.0 points – more than twice the rate (+3.0 points) of the wider set.

JPMorgan Chase and Capital One retained the #1 and #2 positions respectively, each posting the largest gains in overall score (+9.0 and +9.6 points). Evident highlights a fiercely competitive band among those ranked #11–#15, which increased their scores by an average +8.7 points as they bid for top-ten inclusion.

Evident also calculates that the top-ten cohort is increasing its scores over 2.3x faster year-over-year than the rest of the Index – a dynamic that illustrates how investment, scale and organisational maturity are compounding advantage at the top.

From pilots to production: outcomes are emerging

The Index finds twice as many banks reporting active AI use cases compared with last year, with the number of banks disclosing use cases rising from 12 to 25.

That change is accompanied by a willingness among leaders to talk openly about efficiency gains, cost savings, revenue uplift and realised or projected ROI. Nearly twice as many banks reported projected returns across all use cases (up from four to seven), and twice as many reported realised returns across all use cases (up from two to four).

Only three banks – BNP Paribas, DBS and JPMorganChase – reported both realised and projected ROI, and all three have revised projections upwards.

Evident says this marks an inflection point in tone, with the report stating: “AI is no longer framed solely as experimental, but as a driver of measurable business value.” According to Evident, many banking leaders now see 2026–27 as the timeframe when AI returns will become material and reportable at scale.

JPMorganChase: scale, productivity and disclosure

JPMorganChase stands out in the Index for both scale and disclosure. The bank has expanded firmwide access to an in-house LLM suite that began as targeted pilots in 2024; within eight months, 200,000 employees were onboarded.

JPMC reports that many users regularly gain two to four hours of productivity per week and that select software development teams have seen double-digit improvements in productivity. Daniel Pinto, president and COO, updated earlier ROI estimates of “between $1 billion to $1.5 billion” to figures “heading more towards $2 billion.”

Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorganChase, said of AI’s role in the bank in June 2025: “We took AI and data out of the technology org. It’s too important and technology does a great job and remains a deep partner.

“But we put AI at that management table.

“Are we doing enough? Are we doing it right? There will be no job, no process, no function that won’t be affected by AI – mostly for the positive. It’s about getting all of the people who run these businesses to understand the power of it…”

Talent: a booming and concentrated market

Talent remains central to the AI story. Evident tracks nearly 90,000 employees working across AI development, data engineering, AI software implementation, AI model risk and AI product management – a year-on-year increase of +24.8%, the largest growth the Index has recorded.

This expansion in AI talent is almost five times the rate of overall headcount growth (+5.3%). Ten banks now account for nearly half (49%) of the total AI talent across the 50 banks tracked, reflecting a concentration of capability in a relatively small group.

The Index finds a clear correlation between talent and use-case disclosure: banks with the largest volumes of AI talent announced the highest number of AI use cases.

Role-specific and topic-specific training programmes are now commonplace – 38 of the 50 banks disclose some form of AI training, up from 32 last year, and 38 banks have rolled out AI-powered assistants to their workforces.

How’s the UK performing?

The UK emerges as a consistent region in the Index.

Four of five UK banks rank in the top half (HSBC in 8th, Lloyds Banking Group in 15th, NatWest at 16th, and Barclays at 23rd), and three advanced their positions year-on-year (Llyods, NatWest and Barclays).

The report states that responsible AI is an area of relative strength for UK banks, with four of the five ranking in the top-10 for Transparency – these being Lloyds (5th), HSBC (6th), Standard Chartered (8th), and NatWest (10th), although none place in the top-10 for Talent.

HSBC improved in Talent and Innovation while ceding ground in Leadership and Transparency; Lloyds Banking Group showed the most forward momentum, jumping from 27th to 15th driven by gains in Talent, Leadership and Transparency.

Disruption from smaller, nimbler players

Evident also explores whether leaner banks can close the gap.

The Index benchmarks four additional smaller banks – Ally Financial, İşbank, AIB and Bankinter – against the 50 ranked banks as examples of institutions that can “punch above their weight.”

Ally has rapidly rolled out its Ally.ai platform enterprise-wide and paired that with mandatory “GenAI Risk & Controls” training and an “AI Fluency Hub.”

These smaller players demonstrate how agility, targeted investment and strong governance can yield meaningful progress even without the sheer scale of global incumbents.

Investment and the innovation funnel

Activity in the Innovation pillar remains extremely concentrated.

The top ten banks drove 64% of AI-focused investments within the Index, a sign that a small group is directing much of the sector’s venture activity.

Citigroup and BNP Paribas are highlighted in the report for fastest moves from external investment to internal deployment: Citigroup’s strategic investment in a financial data standardisation platform has been embedded into commercial banking flows, while BNP Paribas paired venture bets with an internal LLM-as-a-Service platform used by tens of thousands of employees.

Evident warns that if the sector as a whole retracts from AI start-up investment, banks risk limiting access to emerging expertise and stalling the innovation pipeline on which future competitiveness depends.

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What’s the outlook?

Despite progress, practical hurdles remain.

Banks report challenges in moving from proof-of-concept to scaled domain deployments of generative and agentic AI.

Model validation and scalable second-line defences are major pain points, prompting teams to shift focus toward output monitoring and controls. Reusability of use cases demands centralised workbenches to avoid duplication, while the rapid cadence of new hyperscaler features forces frequent strategy revisions and re-planning.

Evident concludes that the industry is nearing a tipping point where AI will move from scattershot experiments to sustained, enterprise-level value delivery.

Whether the wider field can keep pace with the leaders will depend on sustained hiring, smarter scaling practices, disciplined governance, and the ability to translate experiments into repeatable outcomes.

For now, the Index illustrates a banking sector in motion, driven by fast-moving leaders and watched closely by those racing to catch up.