Japan’s largest banking group, MUFG, announced on Thursday that it will partner with OpenAI to launch an AI-powered digital bank next fiscal year, according to information shared by Tokyo’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
The partnership uses AI to automate account opening, customer chat, and day-to-day money management through a smartphone app connected to ChatGPT.
The plan aims to make banking more direct by eliminating manual processes that slow down users in Japan’s still largely paper-based financial market.
The new digital bank will allow people to talk to ChatGPT about savings, wealth management and household spending instead of calling a branch or waiting in long lines.
MUFG said the partnership is part of a broader strategy to embed AI into everything from customer service to internal workflows.
MUFG expands AI adoption as Japanese banks face technology overhaul
Tadashi Yamamoto, head of MUFG’s retail and digital business group, said the company plans to expand its team of AI specialists to more than 350 employees by the end of March 2027.
To achieve this goal, the Bank plans to hire mid-career professionals with technical backgrounds. The company says this adoption drive is a long-term investment in building systems that can keep up with the speed of AI innovation.
Banks around the world face the same challenges. How to leverage AI without losing our humanity and causing mass layoffs.
The debate over automation is particularly heated in Japan, where the financial industry employs hundreds of thousands of people. Executives at the nation’s largest banks are trying to reassure employees that AI won’t take away their jobs overnight.
Mizuho Financial Group CEO Masahiro Kihara said at a Nikkei event in Tokyo that people should not think they will be replaced by AI. “Humans have the capacity for dialogue, empathy, creativity and ethics,” Masahiro said, adding that machines will take over repetitive tasks so workers can focus on “higher value-added work.”
Daiwa Securities Group CEO Akihiko Ogino told the same audience that managers have been instructed to utilize AI “as much as possible.” Akihiko said human-machine collaboration is the fastest way to improve decision-making and productivity.
Kentaro Okuda, CEO of Nomura Holdings, said, “We will leave things that AI can do to AI, and we will leave value-added tasks to humans,” and argued that this balance is essential as Japan’s population ages.
Mr. Kamezawa says AI will redefine MUFG’s identity
MUFG CEO Hironori Kamezawa said that AI is no longer just a tool, but is becoming a business partner. “We need to transform into an AI-native company,” Hironori said, explaining how the bank is rebuilding its systems around machine learning.
In the company’s latest annual report, he wrote that the age of AI requires people who can think deeply and act with purpose.
Earlier this year, the group’s main arm, Bank of Mitsubishi UFJ, hired Tokyo-based startup Sakana AI to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence in the bank. Ren Ito, co-founder and chief operating officer of Sakana AI, has been appointed AI advisor to Mitsubishi UFJ Bank.
The bank said it aims to “leverage the innovative technology provided by Sakana AI to address business challenges and create high-value impact on operations.”
