Inside Standard Bank’s multi-model AI bet

Standard Bank Group has disclosed further detail about the AI build behind interim results published last week , naming Amazon Bedrock as its enterprise AI platform and quantifying for the first time the productivity gains it attributes to AI coding tools.

The group said about a third of its technology employees are now using AI-enabled coding tools, with early use cases showing productivity improvements of approximately 20%. The figure is the bank’s own, drawn from early deployments, and it has not disclosed how it is measured or over what sample.

The Bedrock platform, Standard Bank said, reflects a deliberate multi-model strategy.

Rather than committing to a single provider or model, it evaluates, deploys and governs open and closed models as the technology changes, while holding security and operational standards constant. That’s a deliberate hedge against lock-in at a moment when the performance gap between proprietary and open-weight models is narrowing.

The group also said more than 39 000 employees, or 72% of its workforce, are active users of generative AI – the same proportion reported in its interim results, now with the headcount attached. It has prioritised four areas: relationship management, servicing, payments and lending.

Margaret Nienaber, chief operating officer of Standard Bank Group, said in a statement on Monday that the group is moving from using AI tools to becoming an AI-enabled organisation. Access to the newest models would not determine the winners, she said, because most organisations will have access to similar models. The differentiator would be combining the technology with trusted data, governance, skills and knowledge of clients and markets.

The disclosure does not address cost. Standard Bank reported technology costs of R11.83-billion in its banking operations for the six months to 30 June, up 2%, while cloud costs rose 37% and the group attributed part of the increase to expanding AI capabilities – offset, it said, by licence rationalisation, cloud efficiencies and infrastructure simplification. It hasn’t disclosed which models sit in the Bedrock portfolio. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media