They redesign the work.
Companies that get the most from AI are 2.8 times more likely to have redesigned their workflows (55% against 20%).
McKinsey, State of AI 2025Five AI cases that reached production.
How large banks got AI out of the pilot stage: the problem, what they built and what it changed. Choose a case to read it in full.
Public cases · names withheldFull cases on request
Full research · AI in French banking
The market data behind the briefs: who is live, what stalls the rest, and the rules from 2025 to 2027.
The French market
French banks already run AI at scale.
What the four large French groups have published about AI in production. Figures are group-wide unless marked CIB.
French banking group A800+
AI use cases in production, with 700 data scientists and business analysts.
June 2025 · Trade pressFrench banking group A · CIB65,000+
employees with access to the bank’s internal assistant, after mandatory training.
Sep 2026 · Press releaseFrench banking group A · CIB100
research publications a day analysed and summarised for sales and trading teams.
Apr 2026 · Trade pressFrench banking group B · CIB−50%
credit analysis time with an assistant that reads company annual reports.
Feb 2025 · Company reportFrench banking group C50%
of 100,000 employees use the group’s assistant, about 40 times a month.
Nov 2025 · Company press releaseFrench banking group D€500m€
committed over 2026–2028 to a group AI company and its computing capacity.
2025 · Company press releaseCredit memos and adoption
Where credit teams gain the most.
Credit memo drafting is the use case with the strongest public evidence. The best benchmark comes from a McKinsey case example presented to credit portfolio managers.
Value created · French banking group A
From €200m to a €600m target.
The group reports €200m of value from AI in its CIB in 2025 and targets €600m by 2030. At group level it announced €500m for 2025 and targets €750m for 2026. These are the bank’s own figures, not audited results.
June 2025 · Trade press€200m€
€600m€
2025 · reported2030 · target
The pilot gap
Most AI pilots never reach the people they were built for.
Four studies, each measuring something different. None is specific to banking, so read them side by side, not as one funnel.
30%
Of 50 large banks, only 30% publish any impact metric for their AI use cases.
Evident AI Outcomes Report, 2025The rules, 2025 to 2027
What a French CIB must meet to put AI in production.
The EU AI Act, DORA and French sovereign-cloud rules arrive in stages. Dates as of October 2026, after the Digital Omnibus on AI moved the high-risk deadline.
17 Jan 2025
DORA applies
ICT risk and third-party rules, including cloud and AI model providers.
2 Feb 2025
AI Act: bans and AI literacy
Prohibited practices end; staff using AI must be trained.
2 Aug 2025
General-purpose AI models
Obligations for providers of models such as Mistral, GPT or Gemini.
18 Nov 2025
19 critical ICT providers
EU supervisors name them under DORA, including AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft.
14 Apr 2026
SecNumCloud decree
France sets out its sovereign-cloud qualification; version 3.2 required from Aug 2026.
2 Aug 2026
AI Act applies generally
Including transparency duties, such as telling clients they are talking to a chatbot.
2 Dec 2027
High-risk obligations
For credit scoring of individuals. Moved from Aug 2026 by the Digital Omnibus.
Not high-risk under the AI Act
- Corporate credit review and credit memos
- Markets, research, M&A and structuring
- Fraud detection
High-risk under the AI Act
- Creditworthiness and credit scoring of individuals
- Supervised in France by the ACPR once its designation is adopted
Sources: Orrick, Jul 2026 · TLT, Nov 2025 · SecNumCloud · Haas Avocats, 2026
What the banks that scaled did
Four things the French leaders have in common.
They host models themselves.
One French group runs its LLM platform on its own GPUs, in its own data centres.
Company press release, Jun 2025One tool for all, five for the trades.
One large CIB gives every employee one assistant, after training, and builds five tools for sales, research, development, operations and risk.
Trade press, Apr 2026AI understands, rules answer.
One CIB’s client agent for 100,000 portal users uses AI to understand the question and fixed rules to produce the answer.
Trade press, Apr 2026
First step
Get your pilot to the people it was built for.
Tell us where your AI work stands. You will speak with one of our senior people, who will tell you plainly what to do next. If it makes sense, the next step is a 2 to 4 week diagnostic that ends in a plan your executive committee can approve.