Tax season adds stress to banking systems with a surge in transactions, fraud threats, data complexity and necessary risk controls.

This added stress, including to AI systems, can expose gaps in data quality, Mark Blake, financial services industry practice lead at data management solution provider Stibo Systems, tells FinAi News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast.

Those gaps to watch for in AI systems include:

• Mismatched data;
• Missing data;
• Lineage issues; and
• Auditability issues.

Financial institutions must ensure “they’re meeting and satisfying the regulators, and they need to be confident that their AI models also stand up to that pressure,” Blake says.

Listen as Blake discusses AI readiness at financial institutions this tax season.

Financial institutions have established cloud partners and now those cloud providers are being tapped for agentic AI, Ravi Khokhar, executive vice president and head of cloud at Capgemini, tells FinAi News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast.

"The role of cloud has now become an enabler for AI across financial services,” Khokar says.

For example, banks are tapping their cloud providers to host agents, creating processes that are “a little bit more intentional for managing risk, compliance, explainability,” he says.

Netherlands-based bank ABN AMRO tapped Microsoft and Capgemini to migrate its existing chatbot to the cloud, according to Capgemini’s ” “World Report Series 2026: Cloud in Financial Services.” The bank migrated its chatbot infrastructure to Microsoft Copilot Studio to create an agent that integrates generative AI features and scalability.

Before moving it to the cloud, the chatbot had high customer drop-off rates, limited capabilities and high operating costs, according to the report. Now, the agent’s language processing accuracy in Dutch has increased by 7% and overall drop-off rates fell.

Listen as Khokhar discusses agentic readiness, multicloud and multiagent ecosystems and the importance of governance, trust and training when deploying agentic AI.

Bank of America invests about $4 billion annually in AI and other technologies to keep up with the needs of its clients.

“AI at the bank … touches everything we do,” Nikki Katz, head of digital at Bank of America, tells FinAi News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast.

Katz leads a team of designers, data scientists, product managers and others who meet the needs of the 59 million clients accessing the bank through its digital channels — its website, mobile app, and its AI-driven assistant Erica.

“We make over a thousand different enhancements to [the digital experience] every year,” she says, noting, “We’re constantly tuning Erica.”

Erica adoption continues to grow as it is continuously iterated. The latest stats:

• About 50 million clients have used the AI assistant;
• Clients have engaged with Erica for almost 19 million hours; and
• Erica has had over 3 billion interactions.

Listen as Katz discusses how her team approaches emerging technology and the application of AI across digital channels at the bank.