RBC CEO Dave McKay: AI is training bank employees at incredible speed

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) CEO Dave McKay said at a Bloomberg Newsmakers event in Toronto that the speed at which artificial intelligence is training the bank's employees is "incredible." He added that the technology is also making staff noticeably more efficient.

What the RBC chief said

McKay spoke with Bloomberg's Lisa Abramowicz at the Bloomberg Newsmakers event. He said the bank's internal AI tools are accelerating employee training: what used to take weeks or months of mentoring now happens much faster. The second part of his remarks focused on productivity. According to the RBC chief, the same tools make workers more efficient at their ongoing tasks, not just during onboarding.

• Speaker: Dave McKay, CEO of Royal Bank of Canada
• Venue: Bloomberg Newsmakers event in Toronto
• Interviewer: Bloomberg journalist Lisa Abramowicz
• Claimed AI impact: "incredible" acceleration of staff training and higher employee efficiency

Why banks are betting on AI for staff training

RBC isn't the only major bank talking publicly about bringing AI into its workforce. The financial sector was among the first to use generative models for internal work, from summarizing documents and assisting with compliance to training simulators for new hires, where AI role-plays customer conversations or walks through cases in place of a live mentor. For banks like RBC, with tens of thousands of employees worldwide, time saved on training translates directly into money: an employee who gets up to full speed faster starts generating revenue for the bank sooner.

What Bloomberg Newsmakers is

Bloomberg Newsmakers is Bloomberg's interview format with leaders of major companies and organizations, who discuss their current strategy and positions on hot market topics. The fact that RBC's CEO used this format to speak directly about AI suggests the topic is no longer a niche internal matter for the bank. It has become part of its public messaging to investors and the market at large. Bank executives increasingly discuss AI's business impact in public interviews rather than in closed-door reports.

Royal Bank of Canada is one of North America's largest banks, with tens of thousands of employees worldwide. As a result, the market reads any public statement from its CEO about internal technology processes as a signal of where the industry as a whole is heading, not just one particular bank. When the head of an organization this size describes a noticeable AI effect on staff training, it adds weight to the broader narrative that generative models have moved from pilot projects to practical use in the everyday operations of large financial institutions.

That said, claims like this deserve some skepticism: they come straight from a company that wants to look technologically advanced to investors and customers. McKay offered no concrete figures, neither a percentage for faster training nor data on productivity gains. For now, the assessment remains qualitative, an executive's personal impression rather than a measurable metric that can be checked against the bank's financial reports.

What this means

A major bank's CEO publicly acknowledging that AI is already noticeably changing the speed and quality of staff training is another sign that generative technology in finance is no longer an experiment. It is becoming an everyday tool for managing people.