Imagine it’s 5 p.m. on a Friday, and you’re facing a giant stack of appraisal reports, credit memos and market data to review before your customer arrives on Monday morning. You could use a trusted colleague to help wade through the details, share strategic insights and draft a meeting agenda.
Bankers at TowneBank have a powerful AI assistant that could do all of this, quickly and efficiently. But while Microsoft CoPilot is installed on the team’s computers, it’s not being widely used.
“We have this resource sitting right there, and we don’t always go grab it,” says Scott Baker, Triad president of TowneBank. “Using it well would allow us to be much more engaged, authentic and strategic with our customers, rather than just spending our time digesting information.”
In hopes of increasing the team’s comfort level and knowledge of CoPilot, while ensuring the security of customer information, Baker turned to MBA students at UNCG’s Bryan School of Business and Economics for their assessment and recommendations. Students in the Capstone class spent a semester reviewing the bank’s current state, analyzing industry trends and interviewing leaders.
“When CoPilot is used in a governed, controlled way, it can almost feel like a superpower,” said Mya Logan, ’26 MBA. “There’s really no limit to what it can help you with.”
Her colleague, Ryan Clevenger ’26MBA, added that he’s heard AI called a “calculator for words.”
The team stressed that, while AI can assist, it cannot replace bankers’ own expertise and human connection. “We’re not trying to automate everything or take away your judgment,” said Steven Edmonson, ’26 MBA. Rather, with AI helping to reduce time spent on non-value-added work, bankers can “focus on what matters most, which is engaging with their members.”
For instance:
- The team suggested CoPilot can help prepare bankers for customer meetings by completing tasks such as summarizing industry trends, creating meeting briefs, reviewing documents, developing questions and conversation starters, analyzing risks and opportunities, and creating after-meeting summaries. CoPilot can even take photos of handwritten meeting notes and turn them into actionable to-do lists.
- They developed and provided a manual of prompts that bankers could use in CoPilot. Standardizing prompts could help increase bankers’ initial comfort level with CoPilot, while ensuing more consistent results. Over time, these prompts could be tweaked and further customized, the team said.
- Finally, they built a plan to train bankers on the system to ensure CoPilot is adopted safely and responsibly inside the bank’s private network.
The best strategy for widespread adoption throughout the company would be for leaders to use it and discuss the benefits with their teams, students said.
Jon Fulton, assistant vice president at TowneBank, has already had some successes with the tool. Recently, he used CoPilot to turn data from financial statements into an easy-to-understand graphic to share with customers. While that task would have taken him an hour or two to do himself, CoPilot did it in less than two minutes. “I’ve heard it said that AI allows you to be the artist, without having to be the painter,” he said.
Heather Cooper, ’26 MBA, found the project valuable for her and her fellow students. “It has allowed us to leverage what we’re learning in the classroom with our own professional experience and apply these learnings in a different field,” she said.
Baker was impressed with the team and its recommendations. “I think we have a light year’s jumpstart on where we’d be if we just tried to experiment with this ourselves,” he said. “The team has given us a much better place from which to start.”
Featured photo courtesy of TowneBank
