Last week, FNBB rolled out an enterprise version of ChatGPT to all FNBB employees. We see the use of Generative AI (GenAI) as a strategic, collaborative tool that can assist our team members to work smarter, be more efficient and introduce more insight into our thinking across all our service offerings. The GenAI rollout process for us has been in the works for months and included several tactical elements that we felt were incredibly important to getting the maximum value out of our investment. These included: The creation of a 5 Module GenAI training course for all employees to consume before beginning full use of ChatGPT; The licensing of the enterprise version of ChatGPT. This ensures our data or our customers data is not delivered out of our environment or used for any ChatGPT model training; Created a procedure for each manager to decide who should have access to ChatGPT, ensuring that there is accountability for its use. What is your institution’s strategic plan for incorporating a GenAI tool across your entire enterprise? Each institution has to examine the following questions: Is there a strategic advantage we can gain by incorporating a GenAI tool into our organization? Is there a likelihood that we will be at a competitive disadvantage if we choose to forgo an enterprise-wide GenAI tool? Will our employees use non-enterprise GenAI tools if we fail to provide one? Let’s examine each of these questions. Does implementing a GenAI tool give us an advantage? – I am biased but the answer to this question is an unqualified YES! There are specific positive outcomes for each and every department across the entire holding company. Just to name a few – Credit can speed up information analysis on loan approvals and write standardized loan memos. Loan Ops can identify loan exceptions and determine what operational procedures need to be adjusted based on new regulation. Finance can analyze every invoice to ensure that we are being billed according to the signed agreements. Compliance can compare all policies to regulations on which they are based. Marketing can build sustained marketing social media campaigns. Deposit Ops can build a content database for all team members to provide accurate answers to vexing questions. And more, so much more. More importantly, each individual will also benefit from GenAI availability. Many people struggle with writing. GenAI is amazing at generating a first draft based on stated parameters. Emails can be more professional. Standards, such as writing in plain English, can be enforced. The options for individual research, brainstorming and insight cannot be measured. Every employee, diligently working their front line or back-office jobs but using ChatGPT to solve real problems, will create meaningful savings and service improvements for their organizations. What is the negative outcome if we don’t enable enterprise-wide GenAI access? – It is my opinion that banking and indeed the whole U.S. economy is rapidly moving into an AI driven work environment. At the risk of being overly dramatic, is it possible in the near future you would see prospective employees ask a potential employer about their use of GenAI? We are not asking employees to do math on paper or use typewriters anymore. GenAI has become “table stakes” faster than any other business tool in recent memory. Will our employees use GenAI tools whether we offer them a corporate option or not? – Absolutely! All of the popular GenAI tools have a free or low-cost individual versions available to the public. These public or personal use versions have some limitations to their usage, but the bigger issue is that they are not private. All of the data you enter into prompts or documents you upload for analysis is available as a source of data for training the tool. That means there is a real risk that employees using a non-enterprise version will upload information that is proprietary to the bank or perhaps customer info (Personally Identifiable Information). In short, GenAI is too useful to be ignored. It is going to be used. The only question is whether you will have control over that usage or if it will be a free-for-all on personal devices with no limits on what will be shared externally. There was a great article recently in The Financial Brand written by Ben Udell. In it, Ben asks the question, “How can GenAI make you a better banking professional in 2026?” Ben asks readers to view GenAI as a collaborator, not a tool, suggesting that it can be a true partner, something used to shape ideas, refine thinking, and accelerate decision-making. He sees it as providing “leverage,” using GenAI to “achieve better outcomes with less effort.” I especially like Ben’s use of the concept of “outcomes.” Even just experimenting with GenAI can yield insights previously unthought of, generally focusing GenAI on specific outcomes and crafting specific prompts to guide GenAI creates meaningful outcomes aligned to expectations. Another key takeaway from Ben’s article is the idea that GenAI is a collaborator that gets more useful the more it’s used. Repetitions will achieve two important goals: 1) it will shape you as the user to get much better about how to “talk” to GenAI via prompts and 2) the GenAI tool will learn your unique writing and collaboration style. Ben shares these specific instructions to up your GenAI game: Upload more files and documents – the more you give it context, the better your outcomes will be Take every chat 3 steps deeper – Don’t just take the first response you get from GenAI, ask it follow up questions and explore further. Ask GenAI what you forgot to ask – Maybe something like, “What have I failed to ask about this chat that you would have expected from me?” Ask for alternative responses – There is rarely one single best answer. When you ask for 3 suggestions instead of one, you might find your perfect solution is an amalgam of parts of all three. Ask GenAI to challenge your thinking – GenAI tools are trained to figure out outcomes that please you. Change that by specifically asking, “Where is my premise incorrect, my request flawed?” The enterprise version of any GenAI tool is going to cost more. However, the question is not whether you can afford to invest in an enterprise-level GenAI service., but rather whether you can afford not to. The measurable costs savings may not be immediately evident, but I am confident that we will be able to account for gross margin improvements due to proper GenAI usage. Deployed and monitored properly, it will be a huge net positive across the entire organization. Is enterprise-level GenAI usage on your 2026 to do list? If not, why not? Reach out to me at dpeterson@bankers-bank.com and let’s chat about your plan for GenAI and all of the benefits it can produce for your organization. By the way, you can meet Ben Udell (and me!) at the Financial Brand Forum. Hope to see you in person April 13-15. Resources https://thefinancialbrand.com/news/artificial-intelligence-banking/your-success-in-2026-requires-that-you-transform-genai-from-a-sometime-tool-to-a-fulltime-partner-194737