How is AI changing BNY's workforce, and what are its 'digital employees'?
BNY treats certain AI agents as 'digital employees': multi-agent systems with their own login credentials, an employee number and a human manager who assigns work and reviews it. The count went from 134 at end-2025 to about 140 in April 2026; BNY Pershing alone reported 160 in March 2026, and CIO Leigh-Ann Russell's digital engineers that find and fix code vulnerabilities passed 150 by October 2026. Behind them is a workforce trained to build: 99% of staff were trained on Eliza by mid-2025 against a 65% target, more than half now build agents, and a 40-hour AI bootcamp had about 2,300 graduates by May 2026. Managers track each digital employee on a dashboard of volume, cycle time and approval outcomes, and 'retire them if they're not up to scratch'. A Digital Employee Agency, led by head of talent Michelle O'Reilly, decides whether work goes to a person, a contractor or an agent. Headcount fell 7% year on year by mid-2026, yet the intern and analyst classes have tripled since 2022, and Robin Vince said on October 15, 2026 that AI is a way to create capacity for growth, not to cut headcount.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Data as of Oct 16, 2026 · BNY profile updated Oct 13, 2026 · 20 sources cited on this page · 140 banks profiled on this site · Markdown
What do BNY's digital employees do, and how are they managed?
| Item | What the record says | Source context | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Definition | Agentic systems with their own credentials and virtual environments that communicate by email and Teams and report to human managers; 'We onboard them with strict permissions' | Russell, Forbes | January 9, 2026[1] |
| Digital engineers | Scan code for vulnerabilities, escalate complex issues or fix simple ones and submit a merge request; more than 50,000 lines of code written | Russell, Forbes | January 9, 2026[1] |
| Count | 134 at December 31, 2025; about 140 at April 16, 2026; 160 at BNY Pershing (March 2026); vulnerability-fixing digital employees more than 150 (October 2026) | Investor decks; Daily Upside; American Banker | 2025-2026[2][3][4][5] |
| Payments agent | Confirms vendor address and country code on cross-border payments before human review; validations from up to six minutes to under 30 seconds; open investigations down nearly 80% (bank figures, unaudited) | Microsoft WorkLab; PYMNTS | May 2026[6][7] |
| Performance management | Live dashboard of processed volume, cycle times, missed transactions and approval outcomes; agents coached and retrained; 'We retire them if they're not up to scratch' | PYMNTS; Forbes | 2026[7][1] |
| Digital Employee Agency | Decides when a job goes to a person, a contractor or an agent; to cover onboarding, scorecards and offboarding | Michelle O'Reilly, head of talent | May 2026[6][7] |
How has BNY trained and hired its people for AI?
| Measure | Figure | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Staff trained on Eliza | 99% around mid-2025, against an internal 65% goal | 2025[1][5] |
| 40-hour AI bootcamp | Nearly 1,000 of about 50,000 employees completed (January 2026); about 2,300 since April 2025 (May 2026) | January and May 2026[1][6] |
| Employees building agents | Nearly half (January 2026); more than 50% (April 2026) | 2026[1][3] |
| AI learning hours | 171,000 delivered in 2025 | 2025[11] |
| Intern and analyst classes | Tripled since 2022, hiring for AI proficiency | May 28, 2026[9] |
| Executive training | Vince and the executive committee went through hands-on training; the bank taught agent building live at a town hall | January 2026[1] |
What does BNY say AI means for jobs at the bank?
Vince called AI 'a jobs creator, not a destroyer' in May 2026, arguing that savings in one place create capacity elsewhere. On October 15, 2026 he said the bank views AI as a way to increase capacity and free people for other tasks, not to reduce headcount: 'We've got plenty of things to do'. Headcount was down 7% year on year at the second quarter of 2026.[12][10][8]
In operations, BNY says the role is shifting from routine processing to supervising AI-enabled workflows, refining controls and managing true exceptions: 'The future workforce is likely to be defined less by execution alone and more by stewardship.' In fund accounting, dynamic benchmarking cut NAV false positives from 90% to under 20%.[13]
Vince told a Northeastern University audience in September 2026 that retraining will be a 'societal challenge' but that he expects AI to 'create more opportunity and more fairness'. Russell's position is that AI should not be an engineering accountability: 'Those who are deep experts in their jobs will figure out how AI can help them.'[14][1]
What does the BNY profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the BNY AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Oct 13, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 38 dated moves, 14 use cases and 56 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eliza and employee-built agents | Enterprise platform; more than half of employees building agents; ~140 digital employees on repetitive tasks. | In production | [3][15] |
| Payments digital employees | Agents that repair cross-border payment data and answer client payment inquiries; validations down from five or six minutes to under 30 seconds. | In production | [6] |
| Settlement-inquiry digital employee | More than 10% of custody settlement status inquiries are addressed by AI as of Q1 2026, with investigations more than 80% faster than a year earlier. | In production | [11] |
| Frontier cyber-model testing | Early access to OpenAI GPT-5.4-Cyber and Anthropic Mythos for defensive testing; digital employees also find and fix code vulnerabilities. | Pilot | [16][5] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 1, 2026 | Russell profile: usage up from about 20% to 99% trained in a year | American Banker says about 20% of staff used Eliza at the start of 2025 against a 65% year-end target; 99% were trained within six months, more than 50% build agents and over 60% of code is built with AI help. It also credits Russell with digital employees that detect and fix code vulnerabilities, now more than 150. | [5] |
| May 28, 2026 | Intern and analyst classes tripled since 2022 | Vince, 'an AI optimist', hires young staff for their AI proficiency. | [9] |
| May 12, 2026 | Inside the digital-employee programme | Microsoft profile: about 2,300 staff through a 40-hour AI bootcamp; a payments digital employee cut open investigations by nearly 80%; a 'Digital Employee Agency' decides when to deploy agents rather than hire. | [6] |
| May 5, 2026 | Named among Anthropic's finance-agent customers | Anthropic's launch of ten finance agent templates carries a BNY statement: 'With Eliza and Claude, we're giving processes new digital employees who work the case end to end.' | [17] |
| May 4, 2026 | Vince: AI is 'a jobs creator, not a destroyer' | At Milken: savings in one place create capacity to do more elsewhere. | [12] |
| Apr 16, 2026 | Q1 deck: 50% daily users, >50% building agents, ~220 solutions, ~140 digital employees | Record quarterly revenue; the transformation agenda's metrics. | [3][18] |
| Mar 11, 2026 | BNY Pershing reports 160 'digital employees' | Managing Director Ben Harrison tells an advisor conference the firm has agents with employee badge numbers and performance frameworks, overseen by human managers; the group-level count reported in April was about 140. | [4][3] |
| Feb 9, 2026 | 134 'digital employees'; $3.8 billion tech spend | CNBC: about 19% of revenue, the highest proportion among peers. | [15] |
| Jan 13, 2026 | FY2025 scorecard: 99% of staff on Eliza, 160 solutions, 134 digital employees | The fourth-quarter deck adds more than 60 AI-related patent applications; on the call the CFO says BNY still spends more on cyber resiliency than on AI. | [2][19] |
| Sep 29, 2025 | Eliza 2.0 shown to staff: 98% trained, majority daily users | Vince unveiled the next Eliza version at an internal town hall; an email from Chief People Officer Shannon Hobbs and CIO Leigh-Ann Russell said it would cut client briefings from hours to minutes and that 'Fluency in AI is no longer optional, it's critical'. | [20] |
What is a digital employee at BNY?
It is BNY's term for an agentic AI system that does a defined job alongside human colleagues. Each has login credentials, an employee number in the directory, its own virtual environment and a human manager who assigns tasks and reviews its work. BNY counted 134 at end-2025 and about 140 in April 2026.
How does BNY manage AI agents?
Like new hires. Managers watch a live dashboard of each digital employee's processed volume, cycle times, missed transactions and approval outcomes, coach and retrain agents whose work is sent back, and retire those that underperform. Getting an agent from idea to production takes a 16-step review path of boards, compliance gates and model-risk evaluations.
How many BNY employees use AI?
About 99% of employees were trained on Eliza by mid-2025, against a 65% target. In April 2026 BNY said about half of employees were daily AI users and more than half were building agents, and roughly 2,300 had completed a 40-hour AI bootcamp by May 2026.
Is BNY replacing workers with AI?
BNY says no: CEO Robin Vince calls AI 'a jobs creator, not a destroyer' and says it creates capacity to grow without growing the expense base. Headcount still fell 7% year on year by mid-2026, while intern and analyst hiring has tripled since 2022.
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