The BNY headquarters in New York, US, on Wednesday, July 10, 2024. Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesAt America’s oldest bank, 134 new workers don’t sleep or take sick days. They don’t even have names.They’re what BNY calls “digital employees.” They work side by side with humans. They have unique roles and are evaluated by how well they do them. Some of their jobs were done by people last year.”The digital employee works 24/7, which is obviously very different to our human counterparts,” said Rachel Lewis, who oversees nine digital employees in addition to thousands of humans as head of payment operations for BNY. “It’s really focused on very specific repetitive tasks that allow our human employees to do much more human, intense, interesting-type roles.”BNY employs 48,100 humans, down from about 53,400 in 2023, according to a recent earnings presentation. CFO Dermot McDonogh was asked on the firm’s fourth-quarter analyst call last month what the 134 digital employees mean for cost savings at the firm. “Our head count has trended down a little bit, but that’s not really anything to do with AI yet,” McDonogh said. “We talk about, internally, AI is unlocking capacity. We don’t think about it in the narrow definition of efficiency. It’s all about growing with clients, increasing revenues and optimizing the potential for our employees.” Across Wall Street, analysts and investors are starting to ask more questions about how the industry’s expenses on AI will translate into higher efficiencies and greater returns. BNY spent $3.8 billion on technology in 2025, or about 19% of its revenue. That’s the highest proportion among its large-bank peers, according to data collated by CNBC.JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, BNY”There’s an AI arms race. The banks are part of that, said Wells …
