What the AI-readiness gap is costing your investment banking firm – and how you can close it

Every major investment banking and advisory (IB&A) firm has an AI strategy these days. But many of those firms aren’t actually AI-ready: they lack the infrastructure and governance frameworks required to effectively scale it and unlock its full value.

The governance issue is particularly widespread, with 63% of institutions reporting that they have limited or no governance frameworks for AI.

The cost of this AI-readiness gap is steep. Firms are getting stuck in an ongoing cycle of expensive AI point-tool pilots that rarely deliver measurable impact beyond isolated use cases. Meanwhile, their professionals are turning to unauthorized AI tools that put client confidentiality and compliance at significant risk.

Accenture estimates that banks can realize $289 billion in potential benefits by scaling AI adoption. But to scale it successfully, firms need to stop experimenting with point tools and operationalize AI with infrastructure and compliance controls designed to meet the unique needs of investment banks.

Keep reading to learn more about the costs of staying in pilot mode, and how your firm can close the AI-readiness gap with platforms built to connect firmwide intelligence, optimize workflows, and govern every action.

The costs of staying in pilot mode

Most firms stuck in pilot mode have challenges that stem from depending on generic tools, using fragmented systems, relying on manual workflows, and taking a reactive approach to compliance. These challenges include:

• Lack of context
  Many firms rely on tools that aren’t designed for the unique needs of investment bankers. They lack built-in context around deal structures and relationship hierarchies, so professionals waste time struggling to get what they need instead of finding and closing business.
• Disappearing institutional knowledge
  Without a unified system for deal and relationship management, your professionals’ institutional knowledge disappears when they change firms or move teams. Years of relationship context, deal history, and client preferences vanish instantly — forcing whoever takes over to start from scratch.
• Coverage gaps
  Fragmented data and manual processes mean no one has a real-time, firmwide view of who’s covering whom, where engagement has lapsed, or which high-value relationships need attention. When coverage grows cold, it’s usually discovered after mandates are awarded to the competition.
• Increased compliance risk and friction
  When governance is managed reactively instead of embedded within AI-powered deal workflows, the result is increased risk exposure, and friction at the moments that matter most —like during conflict checks and diligence.
  Additionally, research shows that 75% of professionals use unauthorized AI tools at work. Relying on policy memos to manage this creates an ever-widening governance gap that puts your firm at significant risk of breaching confidentiality, regulatory obligations, and client trust.

These shortcomings are all fixable — but not with standalone AI tools that merely sit alongside existing systems and workflows.

How to close the AI-readiness gap

The banks that are pulling ahead have moved on from piloting point tools — they’re actively scaling AI with platforms built specifically for investment banks.  

These platforms use embedded AI to connect core systems, unify data, automate workflows, and govern every AI action. Banks are leveraging them to apply intelligence at the moments that determine deal outcomes — and the results are telling: A McKinsey survey uncovered that 40% of respondents using AI in their M&A activities shortened deal cycles by 30 to 50%.

With the right platform in place, your firm can achieve AI-readiness and catch up to its competitors by:

• Spotting at-risk relationships before they grow cold
  Use analytics powered by unified, real-time data to identify which relationships need attention and who’s best positioned to engage.
• Protecting and growing institutional knowledge
  Capture every interaction, deal outcome, and relationship signal in a unified platform automatically so every professional has the full picture, and knowledge doesn’t walk out the door when your professionals do.
• Mitigating compliance risk
  Govern every AI action and embed compliance into deal workflows so potential issues don’t slip through between mandate acceptance and execution.
• Surfacing new opportunities
  Find new mandates across both sides of every transaction with real-time market signals and coverage monitoring.
• Getting instant answers
  Ask questions in plain language, and get answers that are grounded in your firm’s data and respect access controls.

Purpose-built platforms can also help firms close more deals and reach more prospects faster through AI-powered features including AI-assisted email outreach and real-time relationship signals.

Assess where your firm stands

Many of the banks we speak to overestimate their AI-readiness because they’re benchmarking it against their own past state rather than against what’s possible.

To get an accurate, unbiased picture of your firm’s AI-readiness, take our 10-question assessment. In just 30 seconds, you’ll find out where you stand and get guidance on next steps.