A smaller bank replaced a $375,000 software contract by building its own tool, and now runs named "digital employees" that answer tickets, review its websites, and message staff in Teams. This is what an AI transformation actually looks like inside a regulated institution.
CTO John Kowal joins Mike Kaput to unpack Peapack Private Bank and Trust's journey since 2023: flipping build-vs-buy, giving every AI agent a name and personality, building a network of 29 AI champions, and the guardrails that keep AI in check in banking. Part of the AI Transformations series, presented by Google Cloud.
Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here
Timestamps:
00:00:00 — Intro
00:06:02— What PPAC Private Bank and Trust does
00:07:41 — How the AI transformation started
00:10:24 — What's driving PPAC from chat to agents
00:12:09 — Concrete examples of AI changing daily work
00:16:23 — Re-engineering workflows, not just layering on tech
00:17:25 — The technology stack powering the work
00:19:24 — The data warehouse foundation and OpenAI + Microsoft ecosystem
00:24:14 — How AI champions surface use cases
00:25:30 — Measuring impact and ROI
00:27:39 — Lessons learned and what comes next
00:32:09 — Why PPAC gives its digital employees names
00:34:18 — How the CTO role and tech team are changing
00:35:59 — Competing with larger banks
This episode is presented by Google Cloud:
Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.
Learn more about Google Cloud here: https://cloud.google.com/
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