RBC's proprietary AI foundation model for financial services aims to enhance personalized client experience Français
TORONTO, July 29, 2025 /CNW/ - Royal Bank of Canada (TSX: RY) (NYSE: RY) today announced that its proprietary ATOM (Asynchronous Temporal Model) foundation model for financial services enables the bank to leverage unique insights and develop innovative solutions for RBC within a responsible AI framework for financial services.
Created by RBC's research institute, RBC Borealis, ATOM was securely trained using large-scale financial datasets including billions of client financial transactions, providing it with a unique breadth of knowledge in financial services. ATOM is part of RBC's Lumina data platform which systematically collects and curates RBC event data along all business lines and enables AI scientists to process up to 10 billion transactions per minute. As a foundation model, ATOM has deep financial expertise that can be used across a variety of banking tasks. Several RBC products and services currently use ATOM's capabilities.
ATOM will play a central role in RBC's previously stated bold ambition to achieve $700 million to $1 billion in enterprise value generated from AI-driven benefits by 2027 through several AI products and services across all lines of business. And it all takes place in a responsible AI framework that meets regulatory requirements and ensures the data never leaves RBC control.
"ATOM represents the future of banking at RBC," said Foteini Agrafioti, SVP and Chief Science Officer, RBC. "It helps to personalize products and services at an individual level and enables us to more deeply understand our clients' individual circumstances. As such, we will be able to tailor our services for each client and fully utilize the breadth and insights of RBC data while maintaining privacy and security."
RBC's reputation as a leader in this transformative technology after almost one decade of investment in talent and infrastructure enabled the bank to leverage its data scale and position it to leverage AI's potential in financial services.
First used in 2023, ATOM has been deployed safely in several products and services to create an individualized product and client experience, thereby better meeting client needs with a tailored approach. Product and service examples include:
Enhanced credit adjudication
As part of credit adjudication, RBC provides responsible lending by ensuring clients have access to credit that aligns with their needs and financial capacity. With ATOM's advanced modelling, we can better assess client needs and ability to pay relating to credit products. Using AI to enhance credit adjudication capabilities makes the process more accurate, consistent, and insightful and enables the use of large volumes of complex data including transaction histories, and non-traditional data sources to assess credit. With a more comprehensive view, we are able to, for example, extend credit to clients with less credit history, such as newcomers, who may be disadvantaged by traditional credit models
"Applying AI to credit adjudication has provided an opportunity to evolve decisioning to ensure the best customer outcomes and increased levels of personalization in a way that wouldn't be possible with traditional adjudication models and processes," said Gopala Narayanan, SVP, Chief Risk Officer, Personal Banking, RBC. "Adjudication benefits from AI's strength in pattern recognition, ability to consume large volumes of data at velocity, and where needed, continuously learn, and refine models."
Avion Rewards: ATOM is used for Avion Rewards, Canada's largest proprietary loyalty program, which was internationally recognized once again as an industry leader in 2025. ATOM enhanced the ability to provide personalized recommendations which are applied to the Avion Redemption Newsletter that is viewed by 1.3 million users per month. This enhanced personalization has led to a significant lift in redemption conversion as well as cost savings and increased benefit adoption of the program across different categories.
"Applying ATOM to Avion Rewards has allowed us to streamline our offerings and recommendations to members, creating an incredible opportunity to deliver personalization on a large scale with an engaged audience," said Simon Maycock, Senior Vice President, Loyalty, RBC.
ATOM is currently under review to assist with several products and services within RBC, including fraud detection and digital personalization via our online and mobile channels. North for Banking, RBC's ongoing work with Cohere will integrate with proprietary models with the goal to accelerate the development of genAI solutions at RBC securely and efficiently.
"RBC believes that AI has the ability to change what a bank is capable of," said Bruce Ross, Group Head, Technology & Operations, RBC. "That's why we've spent the last decade investing in AI talent, building models, and organizing our data in a safe, sound operational environment. Now we can pull the right details and insights to understand our clients' needs and provide them with an exceptional experience."
About RBC
Royal Bank of Canada is a global financial institution with a purpose-driven, principles-led approach to delivering leading performance. Our success comes from the 97,000+ employees who leverage their imaginations and insights to bring our vision, values and strategy to life so we can help our clients thrive and communities prosper. As Canada's biggest bank and one of the largest in the world, based on market capitalization, we have a diversified business model with a focus on innovation providing exceptional experiences to our more than 19 million clients in Canada, the U.S. and 27 other countries. Learn more at rbc.com.
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