Turning AI Into a Trusted Banking Partner
Imagine it’s 5 p.m. on a Friday, and you’re facing a giant stack of appraisal reports, credit memos and market data before your customer arrives on Monday morning. You could use a trusted colleague to sort through the details, share strategic insights and draft a meeting agenda.
Bankers at TowneBank have a powerful AI assistant that can do all of this quickly and efficiently. But while Microsoft CoPilot sits on the team’s computers, many employees rarely use it.
“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.”
Baker wanted to increase the team’s comfort level with CoPilot while protecting customer information. So, he turned to MBA students at UNCG’s Bryan School of Business and Economics for an assessment and recommendations. Students in the Capstone class spent a semester reviewing the bank’s operations, analyzing industry trends and interviewing leaders.
Building Confidence in AI
“When you use CoPilot in a governed, controlled way, it can almost feel like a superpower,” says Mya Logan, ’26 MBA. “There’s really no limit to what it can help you with.”
Her colleague, Ryan Clevenger, ’26 MBA, says he has heard people describe AI as a “calculator for words.”
The team emphasized that AI can support bankers, but it cannot replace their expertise or the relationships they build. “We’re not trying to automate everything or take away your judgment,” says Steven Edmonson, ’26 MBA. Instead, AI reduces time spent on routine work. That allows bankers to “focus on what matters most, which is engaging with their members.”
Practical Ways to Use CoPilot
The team recommended that CoPilot help bankers prepare for customer meetings. It can summarize industry trends, create meeting briefs, review documents, develop questions and conversation starters, analyze risks and opportunities, and generate post-meeting summaries. It can even convert photos of handwritten meeting notes into actionable to-do lists.
The students also created a prompt manual for bankers to use with CoPilot. Standardized prompts can increase confidence and produce more consistent results. Over time, bankers can refine and customize those prompts to fit their needs.
Finally, the team created a training plan to help bankers adopt CoPilot safely and responsibly within the bank’s private network.
Leading the Way
The students also recommended that company leaders use CoPilot regularly and discuss its benefits with their teams. Doing so could encourage broader adoption across the organization.
Jon Fulton, assistant vice president at TowneBank, has already seen success with the tool. Recently, he used CoPilot to transform financial statement data into an easy-to-understand graphic for customers. Creating that graphic manually would have taken an hour or two. CoPilot completed the task 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 says.
A Real-World Learning Experience
Heather Cooper, ’26 MBA, found the project valuable for herself and her classmates.
“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 says.
Baker left 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 says. “The team has given us a much better place from which to start.”
Featured photo courtesy of TowneBank
