#238: How a 700-Person Bank Is Using AI to Build Apps, Agents, and Digital Employees

John Kowal (0:00)

And if we want AI to be a true extension of our teams, like we had hoped, we need to change the way we interact with AI. And that's how we came to embrace this concept of digital employees.

Mike Kaput (0:09)

Welcome to AI Transformations, a special series from The Artificial Intelligence Show. I'm Mike Kaput, Chief Content Officer at SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute, and I'll be your host. Every business's AI journey looks different. In each of these episodes, I sit down with leaders who have lived the real AI transformation, including the actual stories, the pain points that push them to act, the moment things started to click, and the results they can point to today. Join us as we accelerate AI literacy for all as part of our AI Transformations series.

Welcome everyone to episode 238 of The Artificial Intelligence Show. I am Mike Kaput, co-host of Artificial Intelligence Show and Chief Content Officer here at SmarterX. Once again, today's episode is a little different than our regularly scheduled programming. This is a special episode in a limited series we're running called AI Transformations presented by our friends at Google Cloud. So in this series, we are spotlighting how real companies are driving real change using AI. So in each of these episodes, we're going to explore how leaders at some of the world's most innovative companies are actively using AI to transform how their teams, departments or even entire organizations work. We're going to look at what spark transformation, what work looked like before AI, how journeys unfolded, what got messy along the way, and what results AI is starting to unlock for businesses. The way we do this is we interview leaders firsthand right here on the show, including John Kowal from PPAC Private Bank and Trust, who is here with me today. Much more on John and his work in a minute. Now, just kind of to reiterate, the reason we're doing this series in partnership with our friends at Google Cloud is simple, because AI transformation, often you hear a lot of talk about it, but it can still feel abstract. Like despite the hype, despite everyone seeming to talk about it and use it as a buzzword, far fewer people are actually showing what this looks like in practice inside real companies with real teams, real constraints and showing real business outcomes. So the entire goal here is to make AI transformation much more concrete. We want you to hear how other leaders are approaching it, what they're learning, what they would do differently, and what practical lessons you can apply as you think about AI inside your own organization. So one final note here, if you're a regular podcast listener, don't worry, me and Paul are still doing our thing on the regular weekly episode of the show. Paul and Kathy are still doing their periodic AI answers episodes. So nothing changes here, except you get more episodes of The Artificial Intelligence Show, thanks to this series and thanks to Google Cloud sponsorship. So with that, let's get into today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Gemini Enterprise. Businesses of every shape and size are turning to AI. They're learning how to move faster, do more and improve their performance. But you cannot just hand your data over to any platform. You need a trusted partner with years of experience. That's where Gemini Enterprise comes in. Gemini Enterprise helps you build sophisticated AI agents that can connect with your business data while also keeping it protected by world-class security and governance. So no more compromising between performance and protection. So if you want to learn more and get started today, go to cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise.

That's cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise.

All right. So I'm super excited for today. We are talking with John Kowal, Chief Technology Officer at PPAC Private Bank and Trust. PPAC Private is a boutique private bank with about 700 employees and $8 billion in assets. They serve successful individuals, families, business owners, family offices, and their trusted advisors through personalized relationships and bespoke banking, lending, wealth management, investment banking, and trust solutions in the greater tri-state area. Now, John is here because PPAC Private has been building an AI transformation since 2023, and the story shows just how far an organization can progress when it treats AI as far more than just a chat tool. So the journey that they undertook and were going to discuss began with AI use cases like research, writing, meeting summaries, and employee assistance. It has since expanded into data analysis, custom applications, automated workflows, AI agents, and what PPAC Private calls digital employees. Now, along the way, the bank actually created a network of AI champions across its business divisions and changed how it thinks about developing software. In one example, we'll talk about PPAC Private considered buying a vendor solution that would have cost more than $300,000 and instead built its own because AI changed what they were able to build internally. Now, the bank is building and deploying digital employees that combine AI, traditional automation, internal data, and employee-facing tools to perform recurring work proactively. So in this conversation, we are going to unpack all of this, how the transformation evolved, how PPAC Private finds and develops use cases, what technology powers the work, what results they're seeing, and what John and his team have learned along the way. So John, welcome to this show. Let's get right into it here. Really appreciate you having you.