JPMorgan Chase out in front as the AI race in banking heats up
JPMorganChase has maintained its position as the world’s most AI-advanced bank in the Evident AI Index, the global standard benchmark for AI adoption in the financial services sector.
According to Evident, the leading banks for AI maturity have pulled away from their peers in 2025, consolidating earlier gains and – increasingly – realising ROI for their AI investments.
The annual Evident AI Index evaluates the ongoing AI performance of 50 major banks in North America, Europe, and APAC against 70+ indicators drawn from millions of public data points.
It reveals that although nearly every bank is advancing in the Evident AI Index, the top 10 banks are increasing their scores 2.3x faster year-on-year than the rest of the Index.
This year’s top three AI performers – JPMorganChase, Capital One and Royal Bank of Canada – have retained their rankings for a third successive year. JPMorganChase takes the top spot in three of Evident’s four pillars of AI capability – Innovation, Leadership and Transparency. Capital One leads on Talent, and has continued to gain ground on its rival. While the two undisputed leaders have further extended their lead, there is now little to separate the two in terms of overall AI maturity.
The top 10 is increasingly dominated by US-headquartered institutions, but RBC, UBS and HSBC continue to secure places among the global leaders as the top performers in Canada, Europe and the UK respectively.
Based on the Evident AI Index, the ten banks leading the race for AI maturity are:
| BANK | 2025 INDEX | 2024 INDEX | 2024-25 Change |
| JPMorganChase | 1 | 1 | – |
| Capital One | 2 | 2 | – |
| Royal Bank of Canada | 3 | 3 | – |
| CommBank | 4 | 5 | +1 |
| Morgan Stanley | 5 | 10 | +5 |
| Wells Fargo | 6 | 4 | -2 |
| UBS | 7 | 6 | -1 |
| HSBC | 8 | 7 | -1 |
| Goldman Sachs | 9 | 11 | +2 |
| Bank of America | 10 | 15 | +5 |
Alexandra Mousavizadeh, o-founder and CEO of Evident, said: “Banking is one of the most advanced and competitive industries on the planet when it comes to developing and rolling out AI at scale.
“While some have described recent history as ‘The Summer AI Turned Ugly’, in the banking industry a different story is playing out. We’re beginning to see clear signs that AI investment is starting to translate into tangible financial gains, both in terms of efficiency and, increasingly, via new revenue opportunities. Banks and their shareholders expect ROI to accelerate over the next few years, and those in our top 10 are in pole position to see their efforts come to fruition.
By far, the most competitive segment of the Index was found among those banks ranked just outside the top 10. All five of the banks in this range – BNP Paribas (#11), Citigroup (#12), TD Bank (#13), BBVA (#14), and Lloyds Banking Group (#15) saw a >20% increase in scores year-on-year (compared to ~10% for the wider Index), highlighting the intensity of the battle to keep pace with the leading banks.
Across the regions covered in the Index, all six regional leaders are unchanged from 2024, with the gap between domestic leaders’ and laggards’ AI capabilities also growing year-on-year.
Mousavizadeh adds:“Bifurcation in AI maturity creates a credibility gap. Banks that fail to keep pace risk losing the confidence of boards, regulators, and investors. At the same time, lagging institutions will struggle to attract and retain top-tier AI talent. This combination of stakeholder doubt and the risk of talent flight slows deployment, undermines momentum, and compounds the difficulty of turning AI investments into measurable business outcomes.”
HSBC Heads Top Performing UK Banks
When it comes to AI adoption, the UK is one of the most consistent regions in terms of bank performance. Four of the five UK banks rank in the top half of the Index. Three of the five UK banks advanced their position in the ranking year-over-year. And all five UK banks are tightly clustered – featuring the narrowest spread between the top-performing bank (HSBC) and bottom-performing bank (Standard Chartered) across every region.
Responsible AI continues to be an area of strength, with four of the five UK banks ranking among the top 10 in the Transparency pillar. Conversely, no UK bank places in the top 10 in the Talent pillar.
HSBC improved its standing by +1 position across both the Talent and Innovation pillars, while ceding ground in Leadership (-10 rank) and Transparency (-3 rank). Consequently, HSBC lost one position in the overall ranking, but maintained a spot among the top 10 banks.
In contrast, Lloyds Banking Group demonstrated the most forward momentum, rising from 27th to 15th in the ranking. This performance was buoyed by significant jumps in Talent (+12 rank), Leadership (+20 rank), and Transparency (+14 rank), with Lloyds one of only four Index banks to improve across all four pillars of the methodology.
Mousavizadeh comments: “Lloyds Banking Group’s strong performance reflects a significant mindset shift at the bank, with the establishment of a centralised AI team and an increased focus on AI hires to accelerate the execution of its AI strategy. The upshot is that Lloyds is now sharing more details of its active use cases and long-term plans, translating into a much improved ranking in the Index.”
In a short space of time, Lloyds has matched HSBC in the number of recent AI use cases specifying outcomes. In March, the bank filed a patent for its Global Correlation Engine (CGE) – documenting an AI-driven approach to cybersecurity threats that results in 92% fewer false positives. And in July, the bank rolled out Athena, its first large-scale GenAI product.
Measuring Returns on AI Investment
According to Evident, twice as many banks reported a total number of active AI use cases (jumping from 12 to 25 banks since last year), and 32 out of 50 have disclosed at least one use case with an associated financial or non-financial impact – up from 26 in 2024.
While more banks are reporting returns at the use-case level, only a small group have quantified the performance of their AI portfolios at Group level. Today, eight banks are disclosing portfolio-level ROI estimates – either realized or projected – with just three reporting both.
These frontrunners include BNP Paribas, DBS, and JPMorganChase (all of which have already revised projections upwards). JPMorganChase is at the top of the table, raising its estimates from $1bn to “heading more towards $2bn” in AI-driven benefits, according to President and COO Daniel Pinto.
Annabel Ayles, co-founder and Co-CEO of Evident, comments: “All banks – regardless of size – are increasing their AI budgets, and our data shows virtually every key metric of AI adoption increasing.”
“We’re already seeing these investments translate into tangible examples of use cases deployment. And our discussions with banking leaders suggest they’re expecting to see material, reportable AI returns in the next 12-18 months. Our data strongly suggests that this achievement is imminent. The question is: how big will the returns be? If they exceed expectations, current AI investment levels could pale in comparison to what comes next.”
Talent, Innovation, Leadership and Transparency in AI:
According to Evident, the top 10 banks in the Index all demonstrate industry-leading AI performance across at least one of the four pillars, as follows:
Talent:
- Ten banks now employ almost half of all AI talent in the Index (circa 90,000 workers), with US banks dominating the leaderboard.
- The AI talent pool across the top 50 banks grew 25% year-over-year, the fastest on record, nearly 5x faster than overall headcount growth.
- On average, the top 10 banks by talent volume disclosed nearly 2x more use cases than the rest of the banks in the Index.
- 38 of the 50 banks now disclose some form of AI training to its employees (up from 32 banks last year). And 33 banks now offer distinct training for senior leadership.
Innovation:
- JPMorgan retained #1 spot for Innovation through the unparalleled strength of its AI research team and continued venture investments into AI-focused companies.
- Capital One overtook Royal Bank of Canada for the #2 spot, partly driven by the Discover merger, doubling its AI research team and showing steady growth in patents.
- HSBC moved up to #8, the leading light amongst the European banks, who otherwise don’t feature.
- Despite banks rushing to fund hyperscalers and the infrastructure that will power the AI era, general investment by banks into AI-focused and Data/Tech-focused companies is down double digits (17% from 2024) for the second year in a row.
Leadership:
- Over the past year, even those organizations that have traditionally chosen to keep their progress behind closed doors, are making their AI activities more visible.
- Five banks maintained their top 10 ranks in Leadership: JPMorganChase took the top spot, strengthening its external AI communications efforts considerably, and Royal Bank of Canada jumped +5 ranks to take #3 position, publishing projected financial returns from AI for the first time during its Investor Day in March.
- New entrants to the top-10 included: Natwest, UBS, and Morgan Stanley – and while they did not go as far disclosing financial targets for AI value, they each provided richer updates on use cases and impact than ever before.
Transparency:
- JPMorganChase retained the top position for Transparency and seven of the top 10 banks carry over from 2024.
- Responsible AI activity continues unabated across the industry – over the past year, the volume of RAI-specific talent found across the 50 banks more than doubled, and nearly 300 RAI-specific research papers were published, a +60% increase year-on-year.
- 35 of the 50 banks engage in partnerships with academic institutions, government bodies, or private companies (up from 31 banks last year), with nearly 80% of these partnerships yielding published case studies or use cases (up from 45% last year), demonstrating the increasingly tangible outcomes of their RAI efforts.