M&T Bank is turning enterprise AI into a daily workplace tool, putting AI copilots in the hands of more than 15,000 employees. The move reaches far beyond a single chatbot, connecting AI to customer conversations, software development, reporting, customer needs, and portfolio risk.
As of September 4, 2026, the bank’s AI rollout shows how a large financial institution can move from strict limits on public language models to broad access through an enterprise system. The transformation rests on two tracks: giving employees useful AI tools and setting clear boundaries for how those tools handle sensitive information.
From a Small Pilot to Thousands of Employees
M&T initially blocked employee access to public large language models because workers could enter sensitive company information into public-facing services. Instead of allowing uncontrolled use, the bank evaluated enterprise providers and selected Microsoft Copilot.
The rollout began with a pilot involving about 800 employees before the bank expanded access. In September 2025, 16,000 of M&T’s roughly 22,000 employees were using Microsoft Copilot, showing how fast the program moved from a limited test to a broad workplace deployment.
That figure sits alongside the bank’s current deployment of AI copilots to more than 15,000 employees. The numbers describe a workforce where AI is no longer limited to a small technology group or an experimental team. Employees across the organization can use approved AI tools as part of internal operations.
What are those tools doing? M&T uses AI to analyze call-centre conversations, draft reports, generate code, identify customer needs, and flag portfolio risks. Each task places AI inside an existing business process, giving employees a way to handle information and produce work with less manual effort.
Six Minutes Can Change a Call Centre
One of the clearest gains comes from call-centre conversations. Generative AI summarizes those calls, and Andrew Foster, M&T’s chief data officer, said that “using generative AI to summarise call-centre conversations saves about six minutes per call.”
Six minutes may sound small until it reaches thousands of customer interactions. The time saved gives employees more room to focus on customer needs, while the bank can turn conversations into reports and useful information without asking workers to rebuild every detail by hand.
AI also supports decisions beyond the call centre. M&T uses it to identify customer needs and flag portfolio risks, extending the technology into work that touches relationships and financial oversight. The bank’s internal use of AI therefore links service, reporting, development, and risk work in one larger operating model.
Software developers use GitLab tools to generate code, but the responsibility for reviewing AI-generated work remains with employees. That human-review requirement appears in M&T’s 2026 Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, creating a direct connection between AI productivity and employee accountability.
Building the Technology Foundation
M&T’s AI expansion follows a technology overhaul that began in 2018. At the start of that overhaul, more than half of the bank’s technology specialists were external workers. Today, 80% are in-house, giving M&T a much larger internal base for building and managing its technology systems.
The bank now has about 2,000 technologists working across more than 300 agile teams. That structure helps explain how M&T can support AI across many operations instead of treating each use case as an isolated project. The bank has built internal technology capacity while expanding access to enterprise tools.
The governance rules extend across the workforce. M&T’s 2026 Code of Business Conduct and Ethics requires employees to use approved AI tools and prohibits entering confidential, proprietary, customer, employee, or regulated information into unapproved systems.
Those rules define the line between useful AI and unsafe data handling. Employees can use approved systems for work, but they must protect the information entrusted to the bank and review the work that AI produces.
A J.D. Power survey in the U.S. ran from December 2022 through April 2023, during the period covered by M&T’s technology transformation. The bank’s later AI deployment builds on that broader push, combining internal teams, agile delivery, approved tools, and human review.
M&T’s next phase will not depend only on how many employees receive copilots. The bigger question is how many business processes the bank can connect to AI while keeping review, data protection, and accountability in human hands. With more than 15,000 employees using AI copilots, about 2,000 technologists supporting the technology base, and more than 300 agile teams driving the work, M&T has made enterprise AI part of its operating engine.
Based on
- M&T Bank expands enterprise AI after years of technology overhaul — artificialintelligence-news.com
- In Banking AI, Governance Is The Product — forbes.com
- Scaling agentic AI pilots across the enterprise | MIT Technology Review — technologyreview.com
- Wealth Management: How AI Agents Transform The Advisor Experience — forbes.com
