'Let's not try to boil the ocean': an in-house gen-AI tool in production for over a year, an enterprise data hub with a data marketplace, and AI written into the commercial-strategy job description.
How is First Horizon using AI?
First Horizon, an $84 billion bank across 12 Southern states, describes its AI approach in the words of its CIO: 'Let's not try to boil the ocean.' Mohan Sankararaman, 17 years at the bank and No. 36 on American Banker's 2026 Most Innovative People in Finance list, has spent two years on data and AI foundations: an Enterprise Data Hub that replaces repositories spread across 10 to 15 places, and a data marketplace where employees find approved 'data products' by permission, in pilot with a target of 100 products within a year. On top sits ChatFHN, an internal generative-AI tool in production for about 15 months by mid-2026, used for drafting, policy questions and comparing RFPs, which COO Tammy LoCascio says lets teams 'find novel ways to change the way work gets done'. AI is now written into line roles: Catherine Wood's July 2026 promotion to head of commercial banking strategy charges her with 'identifying high-impact AI and technology opportunities across commercial onboarding, origination, underwriting and servicing', the head of investor relations sits on an AI working group, and the CISO frames generative AI as giving attackers the same productivity gains as defenders. The bank is building its own customer-facing digital platform to bring capabilities in-house, joined a bank-built tokenised-deposit network in 2026, and CEO Bryan Jordan has said he is 'increasingly confident' about integrating a fill-in acquisition in the Southern footprint, with Raleigh named as a market of interest, even as analysts speculate the bank itself is a target. On the 2026 earnings calls the CFO said AI and technology investment is what lets the bank hold expenses flat while hiring front-office bankers rather than support staff, with fraud the one support area still adding people, and the 2025 10-K says the bank is 'seeking to accelerate both our data capabilities and our responsible use of artificial intelligence' while conceding that it 'cannot match the technology spending' of the largest US banks. At Barclays' financial-services conference in September 2026 Jordan said the bank had put ChatFHN 'in everybody's hands', that an internal contest produced 100 ideas that were put into practice, that AI now spreads customers' financial statements and tax returns so staff can start generating a credit memo, with a human in the loop, and that code generation is 'cutting weeks out of software generation'. No AI budget, agent count or headcount effect has been disclosed.
Lead bank
First Horizon Bank
Assets (lead bank, Jun 30, 2026)
$84 billion
Charter
Tennessee state member bank (Federal Reserve)
Headquarters
Memphis, TN
Flagship platform
ChatFHN and the Enterprise Data Hub
AI leadership
Bryan Jordan · Mohan Sankararaman · Tammy LoCascio · Hope Dmuchowski · Catherine Wood · Lena McCloskey · Tyler Craft · Steven Jones · Leilani Farol · Thomas Hung · Jason O'Dell · Terry Akins · Velia Carboni
- ChatFHN: an internal gen-AI tool in production for about 15 months by June 2026 — drafting, policy Q&A, RFP comparison — with humans making the final call.
- Data foundation: an Enterprise Data Hub consolidating 10–15 repositories and a permission-based data marketplace in pilot, targeting 100-plus data products within a year; 'good customer service is only possible if you have data'.
- AI in line management: the new head of commercial banking strategy is tasked with finding high-impact AI opportunities across onboarding, origination, underwriting and servicing; investor relations sits on the AI working group.
- Build in-house: a proprietary customer-facing digital banking platform is under construction, part of a plan to bring systems and capabilities in-house 'for the long haul'.
- Security posture: the CISO says AI gives bad actors 'the same promise' of productivity, threats are realised 'immediately', and the problem 'is managed at a business level, not a technology level'.
- Earnings calls: AI and technology investment underpin a flat expense outlook and a hiring plan that adds bankers, not back-office staff (fraud excepted); the $100 million incremental PPNR target assumes no AI cost savings.
- Filings: the 2025 10-K names the responsible use of AI as something the bank is accelerating, and the board's risk committee gets quarterly reports from the chief risk officer that include AI risks.
- Barclays conference, September 2026: ChatFHN is in every employee's hands, an internal contest produced 100 AI ideas, AI spreads financial statements and tax returns towards credit memos with a human in the loop, and code generation cuts weeks from software development.
- Strategy backdrop: fill-in M&A in the 12-state footprint (Raleigh of interest), a tokenised-deposit network with Huntington and M&T, and Category IV's 'bright line' seen as less bright.
- The 100-idea contest, named: COO Tammy LoCascio's 2025 employee contest (October 2026 profile) produced the winning entry, an automated CRE loan-origination documentation platform now being extended bankwide; separately, an AI upgrade to loan-document file organisation saves about 2–3 minutes per document and hundreds of staff hours within three months (Lena McCloskey, October 2026).
- Fraud is the lead AI use case: on 3 March 2026 CFO Hope Dmuchowski told Raymond James investors 'The number 1 use case we have for AI right now is fraud', describing rules built within a day or two to stop matching outgoing treasury-management payments and route them to the banker for a client call.
- Ten AI teams and agentic customer service: at the Bank of America conference on 11 February 2026 CEO Bryan Jordan said the bank had put together 10 teams to work on AI from the customer-facing side and was looking at automating credit underwriting and at agentic AI in customer service.
- Vendor stack: Databricks and Deloitte built the Enterprise Data Hub (more than 35 data sources onboarded, Genie for plain-language queries, a multi-agent system running on top, per CIO Mohan Sankararaman's 2026 session); Salesforce supplies agentic next-best-action marketing; Cisco Webex Contact Center supplies call-centre AI.
- Contact centres: three centres handle about a million calls a year and 85 to 95 percent are self-served in the voice menu; a 2024 trial of Cisco's AI agent-stress scoring across 160 agents cut survey burnout by 20 percent and call handling by 36 seconds, with rollout to all 3,000 customer-service agents planned.
- Quiet in quarterly filings: the Q1 and Q2 2026 10-Qs contain no AI references, while the 2025 10-K has five hits for artificial intelligence, machine learning or generative against nine in the 2024 10-K; the 2026 proxy says the chief risk officer's quarterly board reports cover AI risk.
- A deeper bench than the profile showed: Leilani Farol (ex-Fidelity) became CISO on 11 February 2026; Chief Credit Officer Thomas Hung is publicly championing AI in credit analysis; Tyler Craft, now head of investor relations, was head of AI when ChatFHN was built, and the bank circulates reports on its top users.
What is ChatFHN and the Enterprise Data Hub?
First Horizon's internal generative-AI tool, ChatFHN, has been in production since early 2025 and is used to draft emails and documents, answer questions about company policy and help procurement compare RFPs, with human judgment making the final call. Underneath it, CIO Mohan Sankararaman is replacing siloed repositories with an Enterprise Data Hub that unifies information once scattered across 10 to 15 places, and an internal data marketplace, an 'App Store' for approved data products that employees discover according to their permissions, piloting with a handful of groups with a goal of at least 100 data products within a year. The bank is also building its own customer-facing digital banking platform to bring systems and capabilities in-house.[1][3]
What AI partnerships and patents does First Horizon have?
First Horizon's AI partners are named in vendor, conference and interview material rather than in its filings: Databricks and Deloitte for the Enterprise Data Hub and agentic layer, Salesforce for agentic marketing, Cisco Webex for contact-centre AI, nCino for a gen-AI co-pilot design programme and FIS for a rewards rules engine. It is also a member of a bank-built tokenised-deposit network. No frontier-model provider, GPU vendor or cloud AI service is named, and a Google Patents search under First Horizon Bank, First Horizon Corporation and First Tennessee Bank National Association found no AI-related patent or published application assigned to the bank.[35][34][33][23][15][16][19]
| Item | What it is | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Databricks | Data and AI platform under the Enterprise Data Hub: medallion layers, Unity Catalog lineage, Genie for plain-language queries | In production | 2026-09-15[35] |
| Deloitte | Consulting partner that co-presented and helped build the data marketplace and agentic layer | Active | 2026-09-15[35][34] |
| Salesforce | Agentic next-best-action marketing; the CFO says the bank was an early adopter | In production | 2026-03-03[33][32] |
| Cisco Webex Contact Center | AI model for agent-stress scoring; AI Assistant call-drop summaries in beta | Pilot (2024) | 2024-03-26[23][22] |
| nCino Banking Advisor | LLM-based banker co-pilot; closed-beta design participant | Pilot | 2024-06-17[15] |
| FIS AI 360 | Rules-engine relationship rewards (FIS does not describe it as AI) | In production | 2024-04-18[16] |
| Operation HOPE | AI-literacy workshops in Memphis and Birmingham | Partner | 2026-04-17[17] |
| Cari tokenised-deposit network | Bank-built network with Huntington and M&T (payments, not AI) | Member | 2026-02-18[19] |
What has First Horizon done on AI, and when?
- Oct 1, 2026
AI file-organisation tool saves hundreds of hours in three months[21]
Lena McCloskey, head of banking quality and productivity, says a recent AI upgrade to loan-application file-structure organisation saves about two to three minutes per document, freeing staff for relationship-building work.
- Oct 1, 2026
The 2025 contest's winning entry: an automated CRE documentation platform[20]
COO Tammy LoCascio says the 2025 employee contest that produced the 100 AI ideas Jordan cited was her idea, meant 'to get a little bit of pull from the organization rather than just everything being a push'; the winning submission, an automated documentation platform for commercial real estate loan origination, is being extended to cover the bank's entire commercial line of business.
- Sep 15, 2026
Databricks publishes the CIO's data-and-agents session[35]
With Deloitte, Sankararaman describes a Databricks-based Enterprise Data Hub (more than 35 sources, a platinum layer for regulatory reporting), a governed marketplace, Genie for plain-language queries, a multi-agent framework 'up and running', and a 2027 aim of agent-built data pipelines and an ontology layer.
- Sep 15, 2026
CEO at Barclays: ChatFHN for everyone, 100 contest ideas, AI credit memos[18]
Bryan Jordan says ChatFHN is in everybody's hands, an internal hackathon-style contest produced 100 ideas, AI spreads financial statements and tax returns towards a credit memo with a human in the loop, and code generation is cutting weeks from software work.
- Aug 6, 2026
- Jul 17, 2026
AI written into commercial strategy[4]
Catherine Wood to identify high-impact AI opportunities across onboarding, origination, underwriting and servicing.
- Jul 15, 2026
Q2 2026 call: bankers yes, support staff no — except fraud[14]
The CFO says the bank is not investing in support areas and that AI is about creating efficiency so the front office can scale without adding support staff, with fraud the exception; the CEO says the post-merger technology push is largely done and investment continues in mobile banking and how the bank deploys AI.
- Jul 1, 2026
CISO on AI-powered cyberscams[6]
Deepfakes and generative AI compress the threat lifecycle; managed 'at a business level'.
- Jun 17, 2026
CIO speaks on model portfolio governance[2]
Registries, drift monitoring, vendor-embedded AI and 'shadow AI' at American Banker's Digital Banking conference.
- Jun 1, 2026
CIO ranked No. 36 for 'data-as-a-product'[1]
Enterprise Data Hub, a data marketplace targeting 100 products, and ChatFHN at 15 months in production.
- May 11, 2026
IR head recognised; sits on the AI working group[5]
Tyler Craft's 40 Under 40 profile confirms the group's existence.
- Apr 17, 2026
Community AI-literacy events with Operation HOPE[17]
First Horizon Bank is a partner in the first HOPE AI library workshops in Memphis and Birmingham.
- Apr 15, 2026
Q1 2026 call: AI is about scale, not cuts[13]
Asked whether AI savings sit in the $100 million incremental PPNR target, the CFO says none do; technology investment is why expenses stay flat while revenue grows without scaling the back office.
- Mar 20, 2026
CIO in Deloitte interview: 'focus on a few big bets'[34]
Mohan Sankararaman argues against hundreds of AI experiments, treats data as a product with a lifecycle, and describes cybersecurity as reducing the attack surface through zero trust and trusted recovery.
- Mar 16, 2026
Proxy: AI risk in the board's quarterly reports[12]
The chief risk officer's quarterly reports to the board risk committee include artificial intelligence and information-security risks.
- Mar 3, 2026
Raymond James: fraud is the number one AI use case; credit AI tool shown to leaders[33]
The CFO says AI is part of how expenses stay flat, a credit analyst team presented a new underwriting AI tool at the leadership forum, and Tyler Craft, then head of AI, built ChatFHN with per-user usage reports; Chief Credit Officer Thomas Hung points to analysis of public-filing footnotes and comparable data.
- Feb 26, 2026
2025 10-K: accelerating data and responsible AI[11]
The bank says it is seeking to accelerate its data capabilities and responsible use of AI, flags flawed or biased data and opaque models, and says even a substantial IT budget cannot match the largest banks' technology spending.
- Feb 18, 2026
Joins a bank-built tokenised-deposit network[19]
With Huntington and M&T, to guard turf against stablecoins.
- Feb 11, 2026
CEO at Bank of America: 10 AI teams, agentic customer service, coding gains[32]
Bryan Jordan says the bank is automating credit underwriting, looking at agentic AI in customer service, and that coding work a software engineer might spend about three weeks on is taking two hours; the CFO adds that AI fraud rules can be built in a day or two and that Salesforce's agentic marketing raised offer take rates.
- Feb 11, 2026
Leilani Farol appointed CISO[29]
Joins from Fidelity Investments to lead enterprise cybersecurity; the CEO cites threat detection, data governance and third-party risk management.
- Jan 16, 2026
Raleigh named a market of interest[9]
The CFO on where a deal would help most.
- Jan 15, 2026
Full-year 2025 net income up 29%[7]
$956 million available to common shareholders.
- Oct 15, 2025
'Increasingly confident' about a fill-in acquisition[8]
The CEO on third-quarter results as deal approvals speed up.
- Sep 24, 2025
ChatFHN rolled out; in-house digital platform under way[3]
The COO on the gen-AI tool and the plan to bring systems in-house.
- Aug 27, 2025
Charlotte hiring doubled down[10]
Consumer-banking and office expansion in the Carolinas.
- Feb 27, 2025
2024 10-K: AI as competitor, fraud tool and IT risk[26]
The filing says AI-based robo-advisers compete in wealth management, that AI makes it easier for bad actors to mimic clients and signatures, and that IT risk management includes risks from AI tools and systems.
- Jan 16, 2025
CFO: $100 million three-year technology push moves to customer-facing work[25]
The general ledger project is finished; the pipeline now covers mobile and online banking, and the CEO says teams closed the 'deferred maintenance gap'.
- Oct 1, 2024
Technology programme: $100 million, 20% more technology staff, 80 projects[24]
American Banker's 2024 leadership-team profile cites the $100 million initiative, a 20% rise in technology staff, training for automation, and an internal consulting unit whose staff-idea process had produced more than 500 ideas and 80 projects.
- Jun 17, 2024
In nCino's design programme for its gen-AI co-pilot[15]
First Horizon is among the closed-beta participants testing Banking Advisor as it explores 'incorporating Gen AI into our operations'.
- Apr 18, 2024
FIS AI 360 relationship rewards[16]
Despite the name, a rules-engine rewards programme (FIS's case study does not describe it as AI) that pays customers on the total value of the relationship; FIS reports checking growth and higher balances, with wider use planned.
- Mar 26, 2024
In Cisco's AI Assistant beta for call-drop summaries[23]
Jason O'Dell says the bank has started testing summaries that give virtual bankers the context of a customer's earlier call, and will work with Cisco on banking-specific cases.
- Mar 4, 2024
Call-centre AI: agent-stress scoring and 'Thrive Resets' trialled[22]
First Horizon uses Cisco Webex Contact Center's AI model to score agent stress and trigger a one-minute photo-and-music reset or reroute the call. A 28-agent, nine-week pilot cut survey burnout 13%; a 160-agent, six-week trial cut it 20% and shortened call handling by 36 seconds. Rollout to all 3,000 customer-service agents was planned for March, with a conversational voice menu and LLM call summaries to follow.
Where does First Horizon use AI today?
| System | What it does | Status | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatFHN internal assistant[1][3] | Drafting, policy answers and RFP comparison; humans make the final call. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Financial-statement spreading and credit-memo drafting[18] | AI spreads customers' financial statements and tax returns and starts generating a credit memo; human verification remains in the loop. | Rolling out | Credit scoring & underwriting |
| AI code generation[18] | Used to generate software and code for several years, 'cutting weeks out of software generation', per the CEO. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Enterprise Data Hub and data marketplace[1] | Unified data with permission-based discovery of approved data products. | Pilot | AI governance (general) |
| AI across the commercial lifecycle[4] | Onboarding, origination, underwriting and servicing opportunities under the commercial-strategy head. | Announced | Credit scoring & underwriting |
| Defence against AI-enabled scams[6] | Deepfake and gen-AI phishing treated as a business-level control problem. | In production | Cybersecurity |
| nCino Banking Advisor (gen-AI co-pilot) design programme[15] | Closed-beta participant testing nCino's LLM-based banker co-pilot and giving product feedback. | Pilot | Third-party & vendor AI |
| AI risk factor and board oversight[11][12] | The 10-K flags flawed, insufficient or biased datasets and non-transparent AI models; the board risk committee receives quarterly AI risk reporting from the CRO. | In production | Model risk management |
| In-house digital banking platform[3] | A proprietary customer-facing platform under construction. | Announced | Customer-facing chatbots |
| Automated CRE loan-origination documentation platform[20] | Winning entry from a 2025 employee AI-ideas contest; built for commercial real estate loan origination and being extended to the bank's entire commercial line of business. | Rolling out | Credit scoring & underwriting |
| AI file-structure organisation for loan-application documents[21] | Saves about two to three minutes per document, hundreds of staff hours within three months of use. | In production | Credit scoring & underwriting |
| AI-built detection rules for treasury-management payments[33][32][14] | Rules are coded in a day or two when a new fraud scheme appears; matching outgoing payments are stopped and sent to the banker to call the client. The CFO calls fraud the bank's number one AI use case and says fraud is the one area still adding headcount. | In production | Fraud detection |
| Webex contact-centre AI: agent-stress scoring and call summaries[22][23][32] | Cisco's AI model scores agent stress to trigger a reset or reroute; call-drop summaries were in beta in March 2024. A conversational voice menu was planned, 85 to 95 percent of calls are already self-served, and the CFO said in February 2026 that AI is already used in the call centre. | Rolling out | Customer-facing chatbots |
| Agentic layer on the Databricks data platform[35] | A multi-agent framework sits on the governed gold data layer, with Genie for plain-language queries; the 2027 plan is agent-built data pipelines, an ontology layer and an insights agent for business users. | Rolling out | Generative & agentic AI |
| AI credit-analysis tool and comparable-data analytics[33] | A new tool from the credit analyst team was shown at the March 2026 leadership forum; the Chief Credit Officer sees value in faster financial spreading and in pulling comparables and public-filing footnote data. | Announced | Credit scoring & underwriting |
| Salesforce agentic next-best-action marketing[33][32] | Agentic features in Salesforce produce next-best-offer lists from client data; the CFO says offer take rates beat the model and marketing spend ran a little over budget for two quarters. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
Use-case links open the tracker's rules-by-use-case matrix: which documents govern each system type.
Which AI vendors and fintechs does First Horizon work with?
| Company | What First Horizon uses it for | Status | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| nCino | Banking Advisor gen-AI co-pilot closed beta (Product Design Program) | Pilot | Banking platforms |
Each vendor and fintech page cites the source for the relationship, and vendor pages list products, pricing and other bank customers. Compare AI tools for banks by category, or read the fintech and neobank AI dossiers.
What has First Horizon disclosed in numbers?
| Metric | Value | As of |
|---|---|---|
| ChatFHN time in production | ≈ 15 months[1] | Jun 1, 2026 |
| Data products targeted in the marketplace | 100+ within a year[1] | Jun 1, 2026 |
| Repositories consolidated into the Enterprise Data Hub | 10–15 locations per data set[1] | Jun 1, 2026 |
| Full-year 2025 net income to common | $956 million, up 29%[7] | Jan 15, 2026 |
| AI cost savings assumed in the $100 million incremental PPNR target | None (revenue-driven; expenses guided flat)[13] | Apr 15, 2026 |
| AI ideas from the internal contest | 100[18] | Sep 15, 2026 |
| Total assets | $84.4 billion[4] | Jun 30, 2026 |
| Time saved per document by the AI file-organisation tool | ≈ 2–3 minutes[21] | Oct 1, 2026 |
| Staff hours saved by the AI file-organisation tool | hundreds, within three months of use[21] | Oct 1, 2026 |
| Technology staff led by the CIO | about 800 associates and contractors[31] | Apr 27, 2026 |
| Contact centres and call volume | 3 centres, about 1 million calls a year (85 to 95 percent self-served in the voice menu)[22] | Mar 4, 2024 |
| Agent-stress AI second trial (160 agents, six weeks) | burnout down 20%, handling 36 seconds faster, satisfaction 4.8 to 4.9[22] | Mar 4, 2024 |
| Post-TD technology programme | $100 million over three years[25] | Jan 16, 2025 |
| Internal teams working on AI | 10[32] | Feb 11, 2026 |
| Data sources onboarded to the Databricks Enterprise Data Hub | more than 35[35] | Sep 15, 2026 |
| AI references in the Q1 and Q2 2026 10-Qs | none[27][28] | Aug 6, 2026 |
“Let's not try to boil the ocean.”[1]
Mohan Sankararaman · Chief Information Officer · Jun 1, 2026
“It's remarkable to see how enabling our teams with a powerful resource like this allows them to find novel ways to change the way work gets done.”[3]
Tammy LoCascio · Chief Operating Officer · Sep 24, 2025
“AI has the same promise for bad actors to improve their productivity as it has for companies.”[6]
Steven Jones · Chief Information Security Officer · Jul 1, 2026
“It is less about cost savings right now in our outlook and more about being able to scale, invest in new hires, and grow our market share without having to add all of that support infrastructure.”[13]
Hope Dmuchowski · Senior EVP and Chief Financial Officer · Apr 15, 2026
“We call it Chat FHN, but we put that in everybody's hands. We came up with 100 different ideas in a little contest that we built internally.”[18]
Bryan Jordan · Chairman, President and CEO · Sep 15, 2026
“That work is largely, if not fully done, but we continue to invest in our mobile banking system and how we deploy AI.”[14]
Bryan Jordan · Chairman, President and CEO · Jul 15, 2026
“It was a way for us to get a little bit of pull from the organization rather than just everything being a push.”[20]
Tammy LoCascio · Senior EVP and Chief Operating Officer · Oct 1, 2026
“On average, it saves about two to three minutes per document. So, it's saved hundreds of hours just within three months of use.”[21]
Lena McCloskey · SVP, Head of Banking Quality and Productivity · Oct 1, 2026
“We're looking at how do we automate credit underwriting and how we use AI in places like that. We're looking at agentic and how we use that in customer service operations.”[32]
Bryan Jordan · Chairman, President and CEO · Feb 11, 2026
“The number 1 use case we have for AI right now is fraud”[33]
Hope Dmuchowski · Senior EVP and Chief Financial Officer · Mar 3, 2026
“What I'm even more excited about beyond just the efficiency is what it can do in terms of data analytics.”[33]
Thomas Hung · Chief Credit Officer · Mar 3, 2026
“Zero in on a handful of transformative use cases that are likely to create value.”[34]
Mohan Sankararaman · Chief Information Officer · Mar 20, 2026
“At the end of the day, the mental health of our associates is key to the success of the customer experience.”[22]
Jason O'Dell · Vice President, Voice Services, First Horizon Bank · Mar 4, 2024
Who runs AI at First Horizon?
Bryan Jordan
Chairman, President and CEO[8]
Mohan SankararamanLinkedIn ↗
Chief Information Officer (also styled Chief Innovation Officer); 17 years at the bank; leads about 800 technology associates and contractors and the move out of on-premise data centres[1][2][31][35][34]
Tammy LoCascioLinkedIn ↗
Senior EVP and Chief Operating Officer[3]
Hope DmuchowskiLinkedIn ↗
Catherine WoodLinkedIn ↗
SVP, Head of Commercial Banking Strategy (from July 2026); AI opportunities across the commercial lifecycle[4]
Lena McCloskey
SVP, Head of Banking Quality and Productivity[21]
Tyler Craft
SVP, Head of Investor Relations; member of the AI working group; earlier head of AI, when he rolled out ChatFHN, per the CFO (earlier SVP and Director of Transformation, Fintech & Emerging Tech)[5][15][33]
Steven JonesLinkedIn ↗
Chief Information Security Officer as quoted in the bank's learning-centre article (page updated July 2026); Leilani Farol was appointed CISO in February 2026[6][29]
Leilani Farol
SVP and Chief Information Security Officer (joined 11 February 2026 from Fidelity Investments, where she led cybersecurity governance, risk and compliance; earlier Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase)[29][30]
Thomas Hung
Chief Credit Officer; spoke on AI for financial spreading and comparable-data analysis in credit (March 2026)[33]
Jason O'Dell
Vice President, Voice Services Manager; runs contact-centre technology and the Cisco Webex AI trials[22][23]
Terry Akins
Chief Risk Officer (as named in October 2024); the CRO's quarterly reports to the board risk committee include AI risk[24][12]
Velia Carboni
Independent director; Chief Information Officer of SharkNinja; sits on the Audit and Information Technology committees, and the proxy lists AI among her skills[12]
What AI roles is First Horizon hiring for?
Data as of · 0 AI-titled postings · read from First Horizon's own careers site, re-checked weekly
No open AI-titled postings on First Horizon's careers site as of Oct 25, 2026. A snapshot of current openings, not a source: postings close. Compare with other banks on which banks are hiring for AI.
Which regulators govern First Horizon's AI?
| Authority | Why it matters here | Documents |
|---|---|---|
| Federal Reserve | First Horizon Bank is a Tennessee state member bank; the model-risk letter frames ChatFHN and any AI in underwriting, and the tokenised-deposit network is a third-party arrangement. | SR 26-2 SR 23-4 |
| CFPB | AI in commercial onboarding and underwriting, and a coming in-house consumer digital platform, sit under ECOA and UDAAP. | ECOA / Regulation B adverse action (15 U.S.C. 1691(d); 12 CFR 1002.9) CFPB Chatbots in Consumer Finance (issue spotlight, 2023) |
| NIST | The CIO's model-registry and drift-monitoring themes map to the AI RMF; the CISO's threat framing to its cyber overlays. | NIST AI RMF 1.0 NIST COSAiS control overlays |
| FinCEN | AI-enabled fraud defence and any automation in monitoring fall within the AML/CFT program rule. | 2026 AML/CFT Program Proposed Rule |
Side by side: SR 11-7 vs SR 26-2 · PRA SS1/23 vs SR 26-2 · MAS AI Risk Management Guidelines vs SR 26-2 · OCC vs CFPB on AI lending · NIST AI RMF vs ISO 42001 · all comparisons.
What does the public record suggest about First Horizon's AI strategy?
Analysis by BankingNewsAI from the sources cited on this page. Observations, not advice.
01
Data-as-a-product is the right first bet for a bank this size
A marketplace of governed data products makes every later model cheaper and more auditable; the 100-product target is a measurable milestone worth reporting against.
02
Putting AI in a line executive's mandate is how adoption spreads
The commercial-strategy appointment turns AI from an IT project into a business objective with an owner; underwriting is where the fair-lending scrutiny will follow.
03
Incremental wins need a public scoreboard
ChatFHN has run for over a year; publishing adoption and use-case counts would let investors weigh the bank against peers now reporting agents.
04
M&A both ways complicates the AI roadmap
A bank that may buy, and may be bought, has to design data and AI platforms to absorb or be absorbed; the in-house digital platform is a bet on the former.
Where does the First Horizon record go deeper?
Which leader rankings does First Horizon appear in?
4 of the computed leaders rankings include First Horizon, each ranked from the same sourced bank pages.
How does First Horizon compare with its peers?
- How does First Horizon compare with its peers on AI and technology?
- First Horizon competitors and alternatives, by business line
Its peer group on this site, by business model and size:
Who leads AI at First Horizon?
Chief information officer Mohan Sankararaman leads the data and AI programme: the Databricks-based Enterprise Data Hub, the data marketplace and an agentic layer, with about 800 technology associates and contractors. Tyler Craft, now head of investor relations, was head of AI when ChatFHN was built, according to CFO Hope Dmuchowski. COO Tammy LoCascio sponsored the 2025 employee AI contest, Chief Credit Officer Thomas Hung champions AI in credit, Catherine Wood must find AI opportunities in commercial banking, and Leilani Farol has been CISO since February 2026. No chief AI officer or chief data officer is named in public material.
What is ChatFHN?
First Horizon's internal generative-AI tool, in production since early 2025. Employees use it to draft emails and documents, answer questions about company policies and help procurement compare RFPs, with human judgment making final decisions, according to the bank's CIO and COO.
Which vendors and platforms does First Horizon use for AI?
Databricks supplies the data platform behind the Enterprise Data Hub, including Genie for plain-language queries, and Deloitte consultants helped build it; the hub has more than 35 data sources and a multi-agent framework on top, according to Sankararaman. Salesforce provides agentic next-best-action marketing, Cisco Webex Contact Center supplies call-centre AI, nCino included the bank in its Banking Advisor design programme in 2024, and FIS supplied the AI 360 rewards engine. No public source names the model behind ChatFHN.
What is First Horizon's main AI use case?
Fraud. On 3 March 2026 CFO Hope Dmuchowski called it the bank's number one AI use case: new schemes in treasury-management payments can be coded into detection rules in a day or two, and matching payments are held for a banker's call to the client. Fraud is also the one area where headcount is still growing. Other uses are ChatFHN for drafting and RFP comparison, spreading of financial statements towards credit memos, Salesforce marketing offers, and AI in three contact centres that handle about a million calls a year.
Does First Horizon mention AI in its SEC filings?
In annual filings and the proxy, not in recent quarterlies. The 2025 10-K says the bank is seeking to accelerate its data capabilities and responsible use of AI and warns of biased data and AI-enabled fraud and cyber attacks; the 2024 10-K also warned that AI-based robo-advisers compete with banks. The Q1 and Q2 2026 10-Qs contain no AI references. The 2026 proxy says the chief risk officer's quarterly reports to the board risk committee cover AI risk, and the board's Information Technology Committee met four times in 2025.
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