As AI innovation accelerates across industries, banks are among the most enthusiastic adopters. The latest ServiceNow Enterprise AI Maturity Index—on which ThoughtLab collaborated on this year–shows average maturity jumping from 35 out of 100 last year to 52 this year among banks. But that momentum rests on a shaky foundation. Our study shows that all banks use AI, but just 24% have testing, auditing, and risk processes, and only 10% have governance guardrails. AI adoption has outpaced governance fourfold.
Since banking runs on trust, and trust runs on control, this is a high-stakes issue for the industry. As banks begin scaling agentic AI, the problem becomes even more acute: deploying agents without governance can create huge risks and liabilities.
Some banks have closed that governance gap. These elite banks, which we call Pacesetters, comprise 23% of banks this year, averaging 72 on AI maturity against 46 for everyone else. They’re not just deploying AI–they’re redesigning their organizations around it. They are defined by orchestration across front, middle, and back offices—connecting data with governance built before deployment, not after.
Our report for ServiceNow and NVIDIA, Enterprise AI Maturity Index for Banking, shows how they got there and what others can do to follow. See here for the full report: ai-maturity-index-for-banking.pdf