Artificial Intelligence-driven tools

helped the

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

save 1.2 million hours of work in its first quarter and cut mortgage approval times at

Toronto-Dominion Bank

, say the lenders’ chief executives.

“AI allows for enhanced fraud detection, credit monitoring, and other important activities,” CIBC chief executive Harry Culham said at the bank’s annual general meeting (AGM) on Thursday. “It makes these efforts faster and more effective.”

The time saved has allowed the lender to look for other opportunities to grow, he said.

TD chief executive Raymond Chun said using AI has cut reviews of its mortgage approval process down to minutes from hours and it is also getting auto-loan decisions to clients within seconds at dealerships.

“

AI offers powerful advantages

, but its progress and oversight must be thoughtful and human-led,” he said at the bank’s AGM on Thursday.

Canada’s Big Six banks

, four of which hosted AGMs this week, are looking for ways to increase their use of AI to

boost productivity

and earnings. None of the executives so far have spoken about Anthropic PBC’s latest AI release that has put the financial world on its toes or that regulators in Canada met on April 10 to discuss the implications.

San Francisco-based Anthropic last week said it had developed a

powerful general-purpose AI model

called Mythos that excels at uncovering and exploiting software vulnerabilities. The tool is supposedly so powerful that the company has declined to release it to the public.

Instead, banking CEOs talked about the benefits of technology. For example, Chun said AI will help “every colleague at TD” be more efficient and speed up “every single process that drives better client experiences.”

At the same time, though, he said it was important to understand the risks that AI will bring.

“We are proactively managing both the opportunities and the risks,” he said.

Royal Bank of Canada

chief executive Dave McKay on April 9 said the lender has created a new AI Group that reports directly to him and aims to accelerate the lender’s AI transformation. He said RBC aims to deliver up to $1 billion in AI-driven enterprise value by 2027.

On Tuesday,

Bank of Nova Scotia

chief executive Scott Thompson said giving assistive AI tools to its employees allows them to use that in their day-to-day work, since there’s a “productivity advantage.” Its rollout of AI is taking place in a way that keeps the bank and clients safe, he said.

But AI isn’t the only technology getting promoted.

Bank of Montreal

on April 9 said it had opened the BMO Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence & Quantum to further help its use of AI and develop quantum computing capabilities for tasks such as putting together an optimized investor portfolio and aspects related to anti-money laundering processes.

Quantum computing

has the potential to solve complex problems that are beyond the limits of classical computers, but the technology is still mostly in the experimental stage.

• Email: nkarim@postmedia.com

  • The data centre next door: How Microsoft aims to feed AI’s soaring needs and be a good neighbour
  • Andrew Chau: Fintechs are giving Canadians choices, but we still need more banking competition