Wells Fargo Rolls Out Company-Wide AI Agents in Collaboration with Google Cloud

Wells Fargo is rolling out company wide AI. It says everyone from branch tellers to investment bankers will benefit

Subscribe to the Daily newsletter.Fast Company's trending stories delivered to you every day The AI agents are expected to help Wells Fargo's teams become faster at automating tasks, quicker at analyzing information, and overall more efficient at their jobs, the companies say. For example, Wells Fargo's banking business generates some 50,000 credit-related memos every year. A custom-built AI agent could conceivably tap into complex financial data, trends, and risk assessments to generate the first draft. "Wells Fargo's adoption of Google Agentspace marks a bold step forward in making banking simpler and smarter -- for our customers and employees," says Tracy Kerrins, consumer CIO and head of enterprise generative AI at Wells Fargo. "By leveraging advanced agentic AI capabilities, we can get answers and insights faster, work more efficiently, and free up time to focus on what matters most: helping people reach their financial goals."

Wells Fargo enlists Google Cloud for agentic AI play

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. The US bank and Google Cloud teamed up in 2022 to launch an AI virtual assistant, called Fargo, for retail customers. The expanded relationship will see employees - including branch bankers, investment bankers, marketers, and customer relations and corporate teams -- with AI agents and tools, taking advantage of Google Agentspace, a unified platform to build, manage, and adopt agents at scale. For its corporate and investment bank, Wells Fargo is building agents to help employees answer, triage, and summarise complex foreign exchange post-trade inquiries, as well as navigate policies and procedures across internal data sources and systems. For call centre and branch staffers, agents can automate routine tasks like balance inquiries and debit card replacements, reducing wait times. This, says Google, will free up time for bankers and traders, allowing them to focus more on client relationships. "Consider contract management, where Wells Fargo handles roughly a quarter of a million documents related to vendor agreements," says a Google blog. "A custom agent can rapidly query these extensive documents -- identifying contracts with specific clauses, payment terms, contract types, and other important contract information, driving consistency and efficiency."

Wells Fargo Deploys AI Agents Business-Wide | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. The move will equip the bank's workforce -- from customer service representatives and marketing teams to bankers and top executives -- with AI agents and tools through the Google Agentspace platform, according to a Tuesday (Aug. 5) press release. "This collaboration marks a defining moment for agentic deployment in financial services...," the blog post said. The bank is deploying AI agents in the following areas, according to the post: Company search is changing as well. Rather than using just keywords, employees can do multimodal search, which includes images. They can ask questions about enterprise data found in employee handbooks, corporate policies and operational tools, the post said. While Wells Fargo is forging ahead, many chief financial officers remain hesitant about agentic AI, according to the July PYMNTS Intelligence report "The Two Faces of AI: Gen AI's Triumph Meets Agentic AI's Caution." Only 15% of CFOs surveyed said they were considering deployment. One reason is a lack of trust since it means ceding some control to agents. Wells Fargo and Google are focused on developing responsible AI, per the blog post. The bank has implemented internal AI governance to ensure that the deployment aligns with its regulatory obligations and corporate values. Wells Fargo sees the deployment of AI agents as foundational to its long-term strategy. "The journey is just beginning, but the vision is clear: a future where generative AI empowers every employee at Wells Fargo, transforming how they work, collaborate and serve customers," the post said. The Two Faces of AI: Gen AI's Triumph Meets Agentic AI's Caution Wells Fargo Expands Technology Banking Team Amid Tech Sector Growth