ISFB Insight
Train banking professionals in the professional use of generative AI
June 12, 2026
In the banking sector, the ubiquity of generative AI is challenging the fundamentals.
Generative AI has become part of our daily work through simple tasks. Summarizing a document. Rewording a text. Translating. Comparing two responses. Searching a database. Organizing ideas before a meeting.
These practices may seem ordinary. In a bank, however, they never quite are.
In the banking sector, learning to use generative AI involves knowing how to verify, set limits, make decisions, and take responsibility.
Indeed, a summary may omit a key point. A well-written response may contain an approximation. A rephrasing may alter the meaning of a document. Data copied into an external tool may raise confidentiality concerns. An analysis produced too quickly may give the impression of reliability that it does not always deserve.
That is why using AI cannot be reduced to a few prompt tricks. Knowing how to ask a tool the right questions is useful. Knowing when not to use it is just as important. The goal is not to produce results faster at any cost; it is to learn how to compare answers, identify what is missing, verify results, and maintain control over the final content.
The article recently published by the ISFB, “When Machines Enter the Realm of Language,” aptly captures the shift currently underway. Machines no longer merely help automate tasks; they write, summarize, rephrase, compare, and sometimes even prepare decisions. They are thus entering the very substance of intellectual work, and they are doing so through the medium of language.
Language—the cornerstone of trust in the banking industry, the tool that enables us to explain, document, advise, assess risk, keep records, and account for decisions—is no longer the exclusive domain of humans.
This shift invites us to take a closer look at banking work. Not all job roles will disappear, nor will all tasks be automated, but some work is—and will increasingly be—supported, accelerated, or prepared by tools whose limitations must be understood. The difference will then lie in the ability to verify information, connect the dots, spot errors, protect data, and make the final decision.
The ISFB has developed a short training course to address this very specific need. The program, “Generative AI for Banking Professionals in French-speaking Switzerland,” is designed for employees in the banking and financial sectors who are not technical AI specialists but need to understand how AI is used and its implications for their work.
The three-day in-person training course, held in Geneva in French, is led by specialists active in the financial sector who deal with AI implementation and related challenges on a daily basis.
Participants will explore key concepts, gain an understanding of the major categories of AI, how they work, and their applications. They explore trends and innovations in AI within the context of emerging technologies and their potential to transform the banking sector. The technical concepts covered are essential for effective communication both internally—with IT teams, legal professionals, business units, compliance functions, and data managers—and with external partners and clients.
The practical component plays a key role. Participants are invited to test platforms for tasks similar to those in their daily work and thus build their own “digital toolkit.” Automatic content summarization, preparing briefings or reports, personal research assistants, creating pitch decks, educational or visual materials, presenting portfolios, infographics, videos, and multilingual communication—these are all tools explored in workshops.
The program also addresses risks specific to the banking sector: data protection, bank secrecy, cybersecurity, copyright, intellectual property, supplier selection, data localization, costs, energy impact, and documentation of usage and associated responsibilities. These topics may seem unrelated to a simple conversational tool. Yet they are central to serious professional use.
Finally, one module is devoted to human and organizational effects: motivation, autonomy, a sense of competence, creativity, cognitive dependence, automation bias, attitudes toward knowledge, and the intensification of work. This is a crucial point. Generative AI is not just about technology. It changes the way we search, learn, write, collaborate, and sometimes make decisions.
Training yourself and your teams means developing the right habits, avoiding pitfalls, and identifying risks.
A bank must be able to specify what it accepts, what it rejects, what it tests, and what must remain under human control. It must also provide its employees with the necessary guidelines to use these tools without undermining their professional roles or weakening the organization’s structure.
Speed is not a skill in and of itself. In banking, the quality of work depends on other factors: understanding the product, determining whether it is appropriate, correctly interpreting a document, setting the right limit, documenting a decision, following a rule, protecting data, and explaining a decision.
Generative AI can be helpful; it can save time and open up new possibilities. But it can also oversimplify reasoning, make language sound trite, and give the impression too quickly that a task is complete. The professional’s role therefore remains central: to review, interpret, prioritize, and take responsibility.
The easier it becomes to access information, the more important it is to know how to understand it, put it into context, and assess its value. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why training is becoming even more essential.
© Institut Supérieur de Formation Bancaire (ISFB). All rights reserved.
The analyses and content published by the ISFB may be quoted or reproduced in part, provided that the source is clearly mentioned. Any full or substantial reproduction of this article in another medium or format is subject to the prior written authorization of the ISFB. In order to facilitate reading and without any intention of discrimination, the masculine gender is generally used, in accordance with the grammatical rule that allows it to be used as a neutral value to refer to a group of people comprising both men and women. This publication is intended for ISFB members and their employees in Switzerland, as well as anyone interested in finance in Switzerland. It is not intended to be read or distributed in any jurisdiction where its distribution would be prohibited.
