Investing in our future.
We’re in an era where technology is reshaping every aspect of the financial industry and changing the expectations of our customers and clients. To stay a step ahead, we must anticipate what’s ahead. We’re focused on harnessing the power of these advancements to help us operate with more efficiency, enhance the experience our clients have and ensure we’re continually ready for what’s next. At the heart of investing for the future is our investment in our people. Powering their potential powers our potential.
Building AI and digital capabilities of the future
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become one of the hottest topics around the world only recently, but use of AI has been common at U.S. Bank for a while. We’ve actively invested in AI capabilities over the past few years to help improve experiences for both our clients and team members. In 2024, we took it a step further and created an artificial intelligence Center of Excellence (CoE), which oversees all aspects of AI strategy and execution at the bank. Central to the CoE is a team of experts who research, develop, design, and implement use cases and governance in partnership with technology, product and risk teams throughout the company. Although there is still a lot to learn about AI and its promise for the future of banking, we’re proud of our efforts so far and are taking steps to enable growth and success. Right now, we’re focused on implementing AI in the highest impact areas: using artificial intelligence in operations to reduce call center times, increase developer productivity with faster code development and testing, improve marketing performance with scaled personalization and reduce fraud with enhanced fraud identification.
Meanwhile, our digital capabilities continue to set us apart and drive growth. Our digital investments have opened doors nationally, helping us expand from a physical regional branch network to multi-channel distribution, nationally and internationally, through digital banking, acquisitions and key partnerships. Our true competitive advantage is our ability to reuse the capabilities we’ve built to date. When we create a new experience, about 80% of the build is simply assembling existing components. This means we can create new opportunities for growth without significant new costs, as well as get to market faster and with more efficiency – all while maintaining a best-in-class experience.
Driving operational excellence
Modernizing our technology for an improved client experience
Along with our best-in-class digital products and services, we’ve been on a journey to modernize our technology and unify and streamline our core operating infrastructure. Our focus has been on creating software and hardware capabilities that can be easily scaled, enabling us to deliver enhancements and updates more frequently. What this means is that we are investing in customer-facing applications and connectivity interfaces with our many partners to provide the best possible client experience online and on mobile. Another example is our work to create a unified data platform, which helps improve our back-end performance, create better experiences for clients and reduce costs on our end. And we’re updating our core systems that hold critical data like account information, transactions and daily balances and migrating about two-thirds of our applications to the cloud from on premises, so we can get products to market much faster. We expect to realize additional operating efficiencies once we complete our application migration. Overall, our $2.5 billion annual investment in technology enables business transformation, supports business growth, and enhances our client and employee experiences.
Building our teams’ skills for the future
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Our people are our greatest asset. They are the innovators and connectors. They build best-in-class digital capabilities, deliver top-notch customer service and help clients solve business challenges with our business solutions. They make it possible for us to grow with our clients. To attract and keep top talent, it’s critical we help our team members to grow, too. In the second quarter of 2024, our Global Learning and Development team launched Skills Academy, a new learning platform providing team members access to training courses on thousands of topics such as strengthening communication skills, building expertise in various software programs, and learning about products. To kick it off, we hosted a company-wide Development Day. Almost 8,000 teammates showed up to see how the platform can help them build new skills for their current and future roles. In the first seven months of the platform, more than 38,000 people completed more than 50,000 voluntary learning courses in the Skills Academy! Not surprisingly, topics like AI and digital literacy are some of the most popular content.
Team members are also loving our new Thrive Thursdays program. Each week, more than 1,000 people attend the virtual session. It’s a chance to network, learn more about the company and connect – to the mission and with each other. Topics vary from wellbeing to professional growth and learning more about parts of the business.
Recognized as a great place to work
Each year, we’re honored to be on some of the most prestigious lists recognizing our inclusive and ethical culture.
Disclosures
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