July 31, 2025
By Daniel Kitts
More than 20 years ago, picking up the seminal AI textbook Neural Networks set Ozge Yeloglu on a path from being a rather bored computer science student in Turkey to a passionate data scientist in Canada who is now helping spearhead CIBC’s adoption of AI technology.
“I started reading it and I was like ‘This is amazing!’” Yeloglu, the bank’s Vice President for Advanced Analytics and AI, says of the book. The way AI researchers were designing computer programs based on how the human brain works and learns made so much sense to her. “It just clicked,” she adds.
The obvious passion Yeloglu and others at CIBC have for AI’s potential seems to be paying off: In the 2024 Evident AI Index, a third-party assessment of AI maturity in major banks around the world, CIBC climbed 19 spots – more than any other financial institution. What’s more, the index ranked CIBC first in the globe when it comes to responsible AI leadership and sixth in AI transparency.
Amid this growing recognition for its AI strategy, CIBC upgraded its sponsorship from Gold to Platinum last fall – the first time any Vector sponsor has upped their partnership to that level.
“We’re proud of the partnership we’ve built with CIBC on their AI leadership journey,” says Ali Taiyeb, Director of Partnerships & Ecosystem at the Vector Institute. “Its continued and increased support for both Vector and the broader ecosystem reflects a deep commitment to advancing responsible AI and shaping the future of innovation in Canada.”
For CIBC, taking its already-existing relationship with Vector to a new level was an easy decision to make as the adoption of AI technology across the economy accelerates.
“We have seen great results from this partnership,” says Yeloglu. “And we would like to continue to invest in it and work together to support the Canadian AI ecosystem.”
Like Yeloglu, CIBC Senior Director of Machine Learning Andrew Brown developed a fascination with AI while in university. He eventually studied at the University of Toronto under Geoffrey Hinton, Vector’s co-founder and Chief Scientific Advisor.
“He has such enthusiasm, which is contagious,” Brown says of Hinton. “He’s famous for coming up with a new theory for how the brain works: Every six months, he’d run into the coffee room and say, ‘I’ve got it this time!’”
Brown decided to take his knowledge of AI into the banking world and has been with CIBC for 20 years.
While more attention has been paid to how AI can transform other industries like health care and media, Brown says AI’s ability to simplify the often-complex processes involved in banking could be profound.
“If we can make the banking experience much simpler and more accessible for people, I think it will lead to great improvements in people’s relationship with their finances and their ability to manage them,” he says.
So when the Vector Institute was established in 2017, CIBC jumped on board and became an initial sponsor.
“CIBC saw this as an opportunity to tap into a great resource and also to support the AI ecosystem in Canada,” Brown says.
One of the primary benefits of the partnership since the beginning, he says, is the ability of CIBC employees to work with experts at the Institute to better understand how machine learning can apply to banking. Employees take those insights back to the bank and improve both the client experience and CIBC’s internal processes.
Yeloglu agrees. “It’s been an amazing opportunity for our own employees, for our AI scientists to upskill themselves, to learn new techniques and approaches in a fast-paced environment,” she says.
Yeloglu adds that Vector has proved to be a very valuable sounding board.
“Being able to say [to Vector researchers] ‘Hey, here are the things we’ve been focusing on or we think we’ll focus on in the next 12 months. What do you guys think? Are we missing something?’” she explains.
Yeloglu says she believes having Vector as “a good sanity check” has helped CIBC stay ahead in the AI game.
“It gives us a lot more comfort to have these resources around us.”
Brown says that in addition to the valuable feedback Vector provides, the conferences and events it organizes are a great opportunity to keep tabs on the latest AI discoveries.
“With all the great developments that are happening with language models and reasoning agents, it’s really important for anyone who’s working in the field to stay on top of all that,” he says.
“I have regular touch points with Vector leaders and discussions around ‘What else can we do?’” Yeloglu says. “AI has been such a fast-changing environment over the last couple of years, and so we all need to adapt to that change.”
Halfway through 2025, CIBC’s use of AI continues to gain momentum and get international attention.
In January, the bank received a Best Use of AI in Client Experience Award by ARCET Global, a UK-based organization. The award recognized CIBC’s Knowledge Central Generative AI initiative, a tool to help frontline teams best support clients while also supporting employees by identifying ways to streamline internal processes. ARCET also named CIBC the North American winner of its Customer Insights & Feedback VOC and Customer Experience Team categories.
Then, in June, CIBC’s AI-powered voice assistant won the bank Best Use of AI for Customer Experience at The Digital Banker Awards. Designed to understand natural conversation, the voice assistant can solve customer queries more quickly than the previous automated system. And while it is often able to help clients on its own, when customers do need human help the assistant can connect them with the right person faster than before.
The bank also continues to roll out new AI capabilities. It recently launched CAI, an internally developed generative AI tool for its employees. Thousands of CIBC employees have already started using CAI for a wide variety of tasks, such as preparing presentations, computer coding, and post-meeting support. CIBC says it chose to build its own generative AI system so it could be tailored to employee needs and so that the bank could employ strict protocols to protect corporate and client data.
“As an organization with a central mission of ensuring Canadian businesses profit from the groundbreaking AI research being done in this country, it is wonderful to see a strong supporter of ours like CIBC experiencing so much success with its own purpose-built AI systems,” says Cameron Schuler, the Vector Institute’s Chief Commercialization Officer & Vice President of Industry Innovation.
As CIBC’s AI abilities have grown, one might think the bank would have felt less need to partner with Vector. But that isn’t the case.
“Especially the last couple of years, we’re probably more connected than ever, which is amazing,” Yeloglu says.
One change she says she’s noticed over the past year is that a broader range of CIBC employees are taking advantage of educational opportunities provided by Vector. While the bank’s data scientists have long been involved in Vector’s programs, Yeloglu says she now sees CIBC employees in the non-AI space becoming interested in understanding how this new technology can help them and their clients.
For its part, Vector is meeting the growing demand. “They have broadened the number of workshops and bootcamps that they provide,” Brown says. ”It’s a great opportunity for CIBC employees to learn about those tools and techniques and get hands-on experience.”
The partnership is also growing beyond courses and training. In recent years, CIBC participated in Vector’s Dataset Shift Project, an industry-academia collaboration in response to the pandemic and the shifts that it brought about in consumer behaviour; hosted a panel discussion featuring the Institute on developing trustworthy AI; and collaborated with Vector researchers on a paper presented at an international research conference.
Yeloglu expects to see more of these kinds of efforts between CIBC and Vector going forward.
“I would say our partnership is built on trust and open communication, which I value a lot,” she says. “This field is moving very, very fast. So we need these types of very trusted partners to make sure we’re going on the right path.”
