A year or two ago, bank executives used to ask how artificial intelligence (AI) could make employees faster or shave costs off operations.

Garry Sien, Chief Innovation and Solutions Officer, International Business at Ant Digital Technologies, says that conversation has moved on.

“Since the beginning of 2026, that interest level has now swung into revenue generation,” he told Fintech News Network. Bank executives put it more bluntly now. Show me the ROI, they say.

The shift matters most in markets still building out formal banking access.

In the Philippines, the share of adults with a formal financial account climbed to 58% in the first quarter of 2026, up from 48% a year earlier, according to a survey commissioned by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), with e-wallets driving most of the growth.

Getting AI from pilot to production remains the bigger obstacle, and it usually is not the model itself.

“The first barrier that they encounter often is not the AI itself; it’s actually the quality of their data and their knowledge,” Garry said.

Ant Digital works with banks to structure their data first, before deciding which models suit which task, since a well-organised bank can often use smaller, cheaper models.

Garry said the hardest part was not technology integration but getting business teams, not just the IT department, to own the project.

Some of Ant’s internal teams now generate around 90% of their code with AI, Garry acknowledged. He believes that what matters most now is knowing what to build.

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