Frontier Intelligence & Financial Services: Katy Elkin, GTM Lead, OpenAI
Chapters8
Executives typically ask how to rethink the workforce, optimize workflows to capture AI value, and infuse AI into products to beat competition.
OpenAI maps a clear path for financial services: transform workforce, workflows, and products with GPT-5.5, enterprise security, and Europe-based inference residency.
Summary
OpenAI’s Katy Elkin lays out a practical blueprint for financial services executives: rethink workforce models to leverage AI, redesign workflows to capture AI impact, and infuse AI into products to outpace competition. NatWest is piloting over 200 AI projects with 25 live in production, highlighted by Cora+ which boosted customer satisfaction by more than 150%. Commonwealth Bank of Australia rolls out ChatGPT Enterprise to 50,000 employees and is expanding AI fluency across customer service, fraud, and operations while partnering on cyber initiatives for over 1 million small businesses. Revolut demonstrates product-level AI integration, from AI-powered fraud detection to Rita, an AI assistant, improving fraud control and support. Elkin emphasizes that AI is accelerating faster than ever and introduces GPT-5.5 as the most capable model for financial analysis and code writing, along with Codex Security and a trusted access program for enterprise customers to test a cyber-specific GPT-5.5.
Key Takeaways
- NatWest reports 200+ AI projects with 25 live in production and Cora+ boosting customer satisfaction by 150%+.
- Commonwealth Bank of Australia has 50,000 employees using ChatGPT Enterprise and is scaling AI fluency for roles in customer service, fraud, and digital banking.
- Revolut is embedding AI across the customer journey, including AI-powered financial crime detection and the Rita assistant, improving fraud detection and reducing operational friction.
- GPT-5.5 is positioned as the enterprise-grade model for financial analysis and coding, with GDP valve evaluation showing state-of-the-art capability in economically valuable tasks.
- Codex Security launched to identify and patch vulnerabilities, plus a trusted access program for enterprise customers to use a cyber-optimized GPT-5.5 model.
- Inference residency in Europe ensures that GPUs powering OpenAI’s intelligence reside within European infrastructure, addressing data residency and regulatory concerns.
Who Is This For?
Chief technology and data officers, CIOs, and senior financial services executives evaluating how to deploy AI at scale with enterprise-grade security and data governance.
Notable Quotes
"There are three questions executives ask: how can we rethink our workforce to let AI drive more value, how can our workflows capture the impact of AI, and how can we infuse AI into our products to beat competition?"
—Katy Elkin framing the core value areas for AI in financial services.
"Cora+ has helped raise our customer satisfaction score by over 150%."
—NatWest example of AI impact in production.
"CBA has rolled out ChatGPT Enterprise to 50,000 of our employees and is bringing a cyber initiative to over 1 million small businesses."
—Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s scalable AI adoption and security push.
"Rita, their AI-powered assistant, and AI-driven fraud detection are tightening the customer experience at Revolut."
—Product-level AI integration in a fintech customer journey.
"GPT-5.5 is our most capable model yet, designed for professional work such as financial analysis and writing code."
—OpenAI’s flagship model claim for enterprise use.
Questions This Video Answers
- How can banks scale AI across thousands of employees with ChatGPT Enterprise?
- What is Codex Security and how does it help secure financial software?
- What does inference residency in Europe mean for data governance and regulatory compliance?
- How is GPT-5.5 different from previous OpenAI models for financial workflows?
- What are practical examples of AI transforming risk, compliance, and operations in banking?
OpenAI OpenAI for FinanceGPT-5.5Codex SecurityInference Residency EuropeChatGPT EnterpriseNatWest AI projectsCommonwealth Bank AI fluencyRevolut AI integrationAI in financial services workflows
Full Transcript
[music] [applause] Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here with us today. It is not often, as Matt said, that we get a room of executives like you together in person. I'm fortunate to work with many of these leading companies in our financial services team. One thing strikes me that comes up from these companies over and over again, which is they tend to ask the same three questions in our conversation. First, how can we rethink our workforce so that AI can drive more value? Second, how can our workflows better capture the impact of AI? And finally, how can we better infuse AI into our products so we can beat our competition and win in the markets?
Let's take a look at how some organizations are doing this effectively today. First, driving value with AI workflows. Processes like risk, compliance, and operations have long been limited by cost and complexity. Now, banks can redesign themselves and redesign their workflows from the ground up and enable themselves to operate in entirely new ways. NatWest is a great example of this. They're partnering with OpenAI to help customers tackle everyday financial challenges, from mortgages to banking to money management. They're already exploring over 200 AI projects and over 25 of those are live in production today. In fact, Cora+ their AI assistant has helped raise their customer satisfaction score by over 150%, which is pretty remarkable.
Secondly, multiplying multiplying workforce impact. Inside financial institutions, AI is becoming an always-on coworker, agents that execute tasks, surfacing insights, and multiplying output. So, your best people can spend more time building customer relationships and focusing on revenue driving activity. We see this with Commonwealth Bank of Australia. CBA is Australia's largest bank and they've rolled out ChatGPT Enterprise to 50,000 of their employees. Their focus on doing this is AI fluency. How can they operate at scale and help their team use ChatGPT, apps, and custom agents in everyday workflows in order to help with customer service, fraud, digital banking, and operations.
They're also bringing a cyber initiative to over 1 million small businesses in partnership with OpenAI. CBA is a strong example of a regulated bank rolling out AI firm-wide. And third, products. AI will redefine how institutions build products that serve, advise, and win. The level of customization that was once only possible to deliver for your high-net-worth clients can now be scaled out customer-wide. A great example of this is Revolut. Revolut is working with our team to embed AI across the customer experience from AI financial AI-powered financial crime detection to Rita, their AI-powered assistant. The result is stronger fraud detection, less operational friction, and faster support for millions of customers.
It's pretty amazing. And there are many other examples of initiatives we're working on with real customers both here in Europe and around the world. So, things like AI research for trading, modernizing code infrastructure, anybody here still on a mainframe COBOL legacy? Personalized wealth management. Again, these are real initiatives and we're tackling these in collaboration with our customers. We'd love to work on these with any of you. Staying on the edge matters more now than it ever has before. AI is advancing at a faster rate than any technology we've seen. And there are no signs of it slowing down.
And it all starts with the model. GPT-5.5 is our most capable model yet, designed for professional work such as financial analysis and writing code. GDP valve, our evaluation specifically designed to test models for their ability to complete economically valuable work, things like spreadsheets, presentations, doing research, clearly shows that GPT-5.5 is state-of-the-art. Now, I started my career as a business analyst, and so for me, this is downright thrilling. We've also worked to make the model more intuitive and more natural to interact with, while also making it even more efficient, so you can get your work done fast.
And while model performance keeps improving, we're also driving down the cost on every generation. Now, as AI models become more intelligent and capable of advanced coding and computer use, we know that in financial services, leaders like yourselves are more concerned about cybersecurity than ever before. That's why 2 months ago we launched Codex Security, a powerful tool to help you identify and patch vulnerabilities directly in your software. And today, we are launching our trusted access program to allow any of our trusted enterprise customers to access our special GPT-5.5 cyber model, so that you can red team and catch vulnerabilities in your infrastructure and applications before malicious actors have that opportunity.
And all of this runs with world-class enterprise security and control. Your data stays protected with encrypt with encryption in transit and at rest, as well as support for enterprise key management. Critical for European institutions, we also have extensive support for data residency with data storage in all of these locations. And for the first time today, we're excited to announce inference residency in Europe, ensuring that the GPUs powering all of your intelligence reside directly in Europe. Now, our vision is to help you govern, monitor, and scale with AI on an enterprise intelligence platform. Today is all about sharing that vision and showing you how to achieve meaningful outcomes across your workforce, workflows, and products.
You'll see it live in the demos, you'll hear it directly from customers, and you'll even see it directly in how Open AI's very own finance team uses our own platform and technologies. We can't wait to show you what it looks like, and we're even more excited to build these solutions with you.
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