Lloyds Bank hires first ever AI director

Lloyds Banking Group has hired its first ever artificial intelligence director as it looks to ‘further integrate AI’ into its business. 

The London-listed bank has appointed Rohit Dhawan, formerly an executive at Amazon’s cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services, as its first group director of AI and analytics. 

At AWS, Dhawan was head of data and AI strategy across the Asia-Pacific region and worked to introduce AI into the company’s customer and operational processes.

He holds a PhD in AI from the University of Sydney. 

The London-listed bank revealed that it has appointed Amazon Web Services (AWS) executive Rohit Dhawan as its first group director of AI and analytics

So far this year, Lloyds has recruited around 1,500 technology and data specialists, which now takes the overall total to more than 4,000 over the past two and a half years. 

Ranil Boteju, chief data and analytics officer at Lloyds, said: Rohit’s appointment is a significant boost for the strategic development of AI technology and capabilities within Lloyds Banking Group, with his wealth of experience delivering technology and change, at pace and scale. 

‘Rohit will work across the business to further integrate AI outcomes into business priorities, helping us to scale AI in a consistent way and deliver against our strategy.’

Dhawan added: ‘I’m looking forward to progressing the group’s ambitious AI strategy and maximising opportunities across the organisation as part of the Group’s purpose to help Britain prosper.’

Lloyds is one of several finance firms to make big AI hires this year. In March, Jeff McMillan was taken on as head of AI at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley.

In April, results showed that Lloyds sank by 28 per cent in the first three months of 2024.

Lower net interest income as a result of peaking interest rates and higher operating costs put pressure on the group’s bottom line, limiting the bank to a statutory pre-tax profit of £1.63billion, in-line with estimates.

Lloyds Banking Group shares fell 2.64 per cent to 53.88p in early afternoon trading on Monday.