From Bloomberg, May 25:
Global banks are pouring billions into artificial intelligence yet struggling to automate workflows. Two ex-bankers say they are being hired to ignite the shift.
Felipe Sinisterra and Dave Wang cash big checks telling Wall Street bankers what’s missing from their AI plans.
On a March afternoon, the two highly sought-after trainers in finance addressed employees of a venture capital fund in New York. Wang, 31, showed how Gemini, the AI model developed by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, could be used to analyze founders’ pitch videos. He demonstrated how a web application incorporating behavioral analysis methods used by the FBI could help compare a transcript with visual cues such as body language and facial expressions to spot potential red flags.
Sinisterra, 30, then walked the class through how to scan transcripts from earnings calls with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude to find the most market-moving statements. The machine ran sentiment analysis and translated management’s spoken remarks into numerical spreadsheet inputs to forecast future financials. Participants could see how AI could help streamline some of the most labor-intensive parts of their jobs.
The bill for the day? $25,000. And they are backlogged for two months.
“What is happening now is that people are seeing AI as a source of edge, a source of offense,” said Sinisterra. “What we’ll see in the future is that people will see it as a necessity.”
Big banks, caught up in AI angst, are looking to hire more AI specialists and shrink traditional banking roles. Standard Chartered Plc is preparing to axe thousands of support positions over the next four years. Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp. have collectively cut more than 5,000 jobs in the first quarter of 2026, despite having a record earnings season.
Top executives, willing to spend top dollar to deploy the technology beyond basic tasks, are experimenting with AI tools themselves, building pressure to embed the technology across the ranks. Sinisterra and Wang, former SoftBank fund managers, are selling confidence and fluency to firms hungry for that transformation.
Wall Street Prompt, the company they founded in July 2025, has worked with T. Rowe Price Group Inc., Citigroup and Bank of America, according to people familiar with the matter. T. Rowe Price has brought the pair in to train its investment professionals, the people said. Citigroup and Bank of America have used them to run sessions for their external fund clients. Wall Street Prompt, bound by non-disclosure agreements, declined to confirm its client list. T. Rowe Price, Citigroup and Bank of America also declined to comment on vendor-specific training.
The Rising Skill Bar
Financial institutions weren’t always enthusiastic about AI. In 2022, when ChatGPT was launched, major global banks restricted the chatbot’s access on internal networks over fears of security lapses.Since then, JPMorgan has rolled out LLM Suite, a generative AI tool used by most of its employees. Goldman Sachs is working with Anthropic to develop AI agents. Bank of America says its 18,000 developers are 20% to 25% more productive after using AI....
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