Financial majors step up AI-driven strategic overhaul

China's major banks and insurers are racing to embed artificial intelligence at the heart of their operations, ramping up intelligent computing and pushing technology from a back-office support function to a front-line engine powering financial services.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country's largest State-owned commercial lender by assets, has made digital intelligence a core driver of its transformation, upgrading its Digital-ICBC strategy to AI-ICBC, marking a full embrace of artificial intelligence and a push to elevate its intelligent development capabilities.

"Artificial intelligence is bringing unprecedented opportunities. For ICBC, digital and intelligent transformation is not optional — it is essential. It is a strategic choice that allows us to seize the initiative and stay ahead," said Zhao Guide, senior executive vice-president of ICBC.

Focusing on key elements such as computing power, algorithms, data and security, ICBC has built a full-stack autonomous and controllable technology system. The bank has also established a large-model elastic compute pool based primarily on domestic computing power, integrating more than 10 leading models and conducting in-depth follow-up training to create a matrix of enterprise-grade foundation models with a deeper understanding of finance.

The bank has developed an agile and user-friendly AI agent builder, established an enterprise-level AI knowledge system, and built a trillion-token financial dataset. AI applications have been deployed at scale across more than 500 scenarios, supporting business transformation in all areas.

For example, in investment and trading, ICBC has widely adopted an intelligent pricing assistant, raising the automation rate of transactions to 96 percent and increasing the number of transactions by 50 percent year-on-year. In risk control, it has developed an intelligent credit assistant to support lending staff across the full process.

As part of its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), ICBC has outlined a roadmap to build an AI-driven ICBC. It will accelerate intelligent transformation, develop enterprise-level data infrastructure and knowledge bases, and innovate financial AI agents to explore new paradigms for AI-empowered finance. The bank also plans to upgrade its smart banking ecosystem, expand computing capacity and proactively optimize the computing power infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Agricultural Bank of China will step up efforts in technology finance in 2026 to promote deeper integration of technological and industrial innovation and support high-quality economic growth.

"We are actively embracing a new wave of technological revolution, advancing smart banking, and deepening data empowerment and AI applications, striving to turn technological innovation into the greatest driver of high-quality development," said Wang Zhiheng, president of ABC.

The lender is harnessing technologies such as AI-powered recognition to strengthen risk management, using big data modeling to sharpen early-warning systems for loan risks and safeguard asset quality.

It is also advancing "AI plus wealth management" applications, building a more integrated end-to-end service model that spans customer insights, intelligent asset allocation and post-investment support, in a bid to enhance its fintech capabilities.

Wang Dajun, executive vice-president of ABC, said the bank is accelerating the adoption of digital tools, coordinating large-model deployment and AI agent development, and enhancing its industrial financial service platform. By leveraging internal and external data, ABC is refining its evaluation models for tech enterprises, improving online products and risk control systems, and enhancing AI assistants to boost service quality and efficiency.

Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China has also made AI a central pillar of its strategy. In 2025, the company introduced its "AI in All" strategy and advanced its plan to develop five digital systems — covering business, operations, management, marketing and services — to reshape the value chains of finance, healthcare and eldercare.

Michael Guo Xiaotao, co-CEO of Ping An Group, said AI is a defining global trend, and Ping An has identified technology-led development as a key strategic direction, with sustained investment in AI and technology.

This year, Ping An will complete a major platform upgrade, integrating multiple apps into a single unified entry point to connect users, traffic, data and services, improving both customer experience and operational efficiency — driven by AI at its core.

China Merchants Bank is also accelerating its push toward developing itself into an intelligent bank. In its 2025 annual results announcement, CMB said it will focus on establishing a systematic AI competitive advantage by strengthening its technological foundation, developing capability frameworks and fostering ecosystem partnerships. The bank will drive an all-round upgrade of AI, shifting its role from a supporting tool to the core of services.

By the end of 2025, the Shenzhen, Guangdong province-based national joint-stock commercial lender had deployed 856 large-model application scenarios. These applications replaced more than 15.56 million hours of manual work last year — equivalent to the workload of over 8,000 full-time employees, said Zhou Tianhong, chief information officer at CMB.

AI has already been embedded in front-line business processes of the bank. For example, an AI assistant for account managers has driven a 20 percent increase in the average transaction volume per customer, Zhou added.

He also noted that large language models still carry the risk of hallucinations. CMB is taking multiple measures to ensure safe, reliable and trustworthy large language model applications, and will continue to increase investment in 2026 to advance its goal for building an intelligent bank.