RBC CEO Dave McKay: AI Trains Bank Employees at Incredible Speed

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) CEO Dave McKay stated at a Bloomberg Newsmakers event in Toronto that the speed at which artificial intelligence trains the bank's employees can be called "incredible" — and that the technology simultaneously makes staff significantly more efficient.

What RBC's CEO Said

McKay spoke with Bloomberg journalist Lisa Abramowicz at the Bloomberg Newsmakers event. According to him, AI tools within the bank accelerate employee training — what previously took weeks or months of mentorship now happens noticeably faster. The second part of his statement concerned productivity: the same tools, according to RBC's chief, make workers more efficient in current tasks, not just during the onboarding stage.

• Speaker — Dave McKay, CEO of Royal Bank of Canada
• Platform — Bloomberg Newsmakers event in Toronto
• Interviewer — Bloomberg journalist Lisa Abramowicz
• Stated AI effect — "incredible" acceleration of employee training and increased staff efficiency

Why Banks Are Betting on AI for Employee Training

RBC is not the only major bank publicly discussing AI implementation in personnel work. The financial sector was one of the first to start using generative models for internal tasks — from document summarization and compliance assistance to training simulators for new employees, where AI models scenarios of client interactions or analyzes cases instead of a live mentor. For banks with tens of thousands of employees worldwide, like RBC, time savings on training translates directly to money — an employee who reaches full productivity faster brings the bank revenue faster.

What Is Bloomberg Newsmakers Format

Bloomberg Newsmakers is a Bloomberg interview format with leaders of major companies and organizations, where interviewees discuss their current strategy and position on current market topics. The appearance of RBC's chief in this format with a direct statement about AI suggests that the topic has stopped being narrowly specialized for the bank and has become a point of public communication with investors and the market as a whole — bank executives increasingly speak about AI's effect on business not in closed reports but in public interviews.

Royal Bank of Canada is one of North America's largest banks with tens of thousands of employees worldwide, so any public statement by its CEO about internal technological processes is perceived by the market as a signal about where the entire industry is moving, not just one specific bank. When the head of an organization of such scale speaks about a notable AI effect on staff training, it adds weight to the overall narrative that generative models have already moved from pilot projects to practical application in everyday business processes of major financial institutions.

However, statements of this kind should be taken with the understanding that they come from a company interested in appearing technologically advanced in the eyes of investors and clients. McKay did not provide specific figures in his presentation — neither the percentage of training acceleration nor data on productivity increases — so the assessment of the effect remains qualitative, at the level of personal impression of the executive, rather than a measurable indicator that can be verified against the bank's reports.

What This Means

Public recognition by the CEO of a major bank that AI is already notably changing the speed and quality of staff training is yet another signal that generative technologies in the financial sector have stopped being an experiment and are becoming an everyday tool for human resources management.