Introduction to AI in Investment Banking
BNP Paribas is testing how far AI can be pushed into the day-to-day mechanics of investment banking. According to Financial News, the bank has rolled out an internal tool called IB Portal, designed to help bankers assemble client pitches more quickly and with less repetition.
The Role of Pitch Preparation in Investment Banking
Pitch preparation sits at the centre of investment banking work. Teams pull together market views, deal history, and tailored narratives under tight timelines. Much of that effort repeats work that already exists elsewhere in the organisation. Slides, charts, and precedent analysis are often rebuilt from scratch, even when similar material has been used before by another team or office.
How IB Portal Works
IB Portal is meant to reduce that waste. The system searches BNP Paribas’s past pitch materials and uses what the bank describes as “smart prompts” to surface relevant slides, analysis, and supporting content for a new mandate. George Holst, head of the corporate clients group at BNP Paribas, said the tool functions like an AI-powered search engine that helps bankers find what matters ahead of a pitch or client meeting. In his words, it can cut research time by days, giving teams more room to focus on strategy and client judgement.
The Importance of Structure and Traceability
The use case matters because it places AI inside real, constrained workflows rather than around them. Pitch decks are not generic documents. They reflect internal viewpoints, client-specific details, and regulatory requirements. Making an AI tool useful in this setting depends less on conversational flair and more on structure. That includes deciding which materials are searchable, setting clear access controls in regions and business lines, and defining how retrieved content moves from internal draft to client-ready output. In practice, that also means traceability. Bankers need to see where information comes from, and anything produced by the system still needs human review before it leaves the firm. Without those checks, the risk of errors or inappropriate disclosure rises quickly.
BNP Paribas Builds AI Tools on Internal Platforms
The portal also fits into a broader internal build-out at BNP Paribas. In June 2025, the bank outlined an “LLM as a Service” platform aimed at giving its business units shared access to large language models in the group’s own infrastructure. The platform is run by internal IT teams and hosted in BNP Paribas data centres with dedicated GPU capacity. The bank said it supports a mix of models, including open-source options and systems from Mistral AI, with plans to add models trained on internal data. Intended use cases include internal assistants, document drafting, and information retrieval.
Other Banks’ Approaches to AI
Other large banks are taking a similar approach. JPMorganChase has pointed to growing use of its internal “LLM Suite”, which provides staff access to models in a controlled environment. Reuters has reported on Goldman Sachs’s investment in AI engineering and its rollout of a proprietary “GS AI Assistant”. UBS has discussed an internal M&A “co-pilot” used for idea generation. Alongside these in-house efforts, specialist tools like Rogo have found traction at firms including Nomura and Moelis, pointing to demand for finance-specific AI tools.
Conclusion
For BNP Paribas, the real test is whether IB Portal becomes part of everyday work rather than a one-off experiment. The potential benefits are straightforward: less time spent searching, fewer duplicated decks, and better reuse of institutional knowledge. The risks are just as familiar. Hallucinated data, unclear sources, and accidental exposure of sensitive information all carry real consequences in banking. The most stable deployments keep AI tightly constrained. That usually means grounding outputs in approved internal content, applying role-based access controls, recording how tools are used, and requiring human sign-off before anything reaches a client. If IB Portal operates in those boundaries, it offers a practical view of how enterprise AI is taking shape: not as a source of instant answers, but as a faster and safer way to navigate what an organisation already knows.
FAQs
Q: What is IB Portal?
A: IB Portal is an internal tool developed by BNP Paribas to help bankers assemble client pitches more quickly and with less repetition.
Q: How does IB Portal work?
A: IB Portal searches BNP Paribas’s past pitch materials and uses “smart prompts” to surface relevant slides, analysis, and supporting content for a new mandate.
Q: What are the benefits of using IB Portal?
A: The benefits of using IB Portal include less time spent searching, fewer duplicated decks, and better reuse of institutional knowledge.
Q: What are the risks associated with using AI in investment banking?
A: The risks associated with using AI in investment banking include hallucinated data, unclear sources, and accidental exposure of sensitive information.
Q: How can banks mitigate these risks?
A: Banks can mitigate these risks by keeping AI tightly constrained, grounding outputs in approved internal content, applying role-based access controls, recording how tools are used, and requiring human sign-off before anything reaches a client.
