Brazil’s main brick-and-mortar retail banks proceed to take a position closely in technology and automation to enhance processes, merchandise, and customer support, in addition to scale back labor prices and optimize their constructions.
According to Febraban, which brings collectively the most important business banks in the nation, the banking sector’s funding in technology in 2025 ought to attain R$47.8 billion (bi), a progress of 13% in comparison with the earlier yr.
The group’s analysis factors to cybersecurity and synthetic intelligence (AI) as precedence areas. According to Febraban, 94% of monetary establishments already use AI extensively in customer support and expertise.
Itaú
Itaú Unibanco, the most important non-native digital financial institution in Brazil, has been investing in technology, particularly in cloud computing and AI.
The establishment is in a sophisticated stage of migrating to the cloud, aiming to function 100% of its infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS) by 2028. Currently, roughly 70% has already been migrated. The contract with AWS, initiated in 2018, is likely one of the largest the technology firm has in Latin America.
In June 2025, the financial institution launched “Itaú Investment Intelligence,” a conversational AI agent to suggest merchandise and reply questions on investments.
Also this yr, it launched ICTI (Itaú Institute of Science and Technology), specializing in partnerships with academia and analysis facilities. The initiative started with 80 exterior researchers and 50 ongoing analysis tasks, 37 in AI and 13 in quantum computing.
In the primary 9 months of the yr, the financial institution claims to have greater than doubled (+141%) the amount of generative AI initiatives in use and elevated the amount of conventional machine studying fashions by 40%.
In the third quarter, investments in technology for creating options had been thrice larger than in 2018, whereas infrastructure prices fell by 36%, in accordance with Itaú.
Technology bills, together with personnel and infrastructure, totaled R$3.11 billion in the quarter, a 17.3% year-over-year enhance. Over the nine-month interval, they rose 20.4% to R$8.7 billion. Itaú has greater than 1,500 deliberate initiatives and greater than a thousand below implementation for course of assessment and simplification, automation, and intensive use of information and analytics.
Furthermore, in January, the financial institution acquired 15% of NeoSpace, a Brazilian startup specializing in generative AI fashions for the monetary sector, for R$105 million (mi).
In June, it launched a brand new company enterprise fund with an preliminary funding of R$500 million in technology startups and fintechs, specializing in cybersecurity, AI, and funds.
Bradesco
Bradesco ‘s transformation plan entails technology, knowledge, and a brand new organizational construction. The financial institution, which had a substantial portion of its IT workforce outsourced, intends to internalize as much as 80% of those professionals. Currently, its IT workforce has nearly 11,000 folks.
The BIA synthetic intelligence platform stays Bradesco’s most important instrument for interacting with prospects on its app and WhatsApp. Launched nearly 10 years in the past with IBM ‘s Watson technology, BIA handles assist, transactions, and inquiries and is evolving in direction of extra superior AI.
According to the financial institution, greater than 14 million (mi) prospects are totally digital. In the third quarter of 2025, the financial institution had 111 million prospects.
Bradesco makes use of the proprietary Bridge platform, primarily based on Microsoft and ServiceNow applied sciences, to develop and apply generative AI in its companies. The platform helps BIA and different inside purposes. According to Bradesco, there are presently greater than 450 use instances below growth on Bridge.
The establishment has adopted a multi-cloud technique with suppliers corresponding to Oracle , IBM, Microsoft Azure, and AWS. At the identical time, it has elevated the variety of its IT professionals by 1,500.
Among the priorities in this space are new hires, productiveness good points, buyer improvements, threat administration, and hyper-personalization.
Amid the growth of technology, the financial institution lowered its workforce by 490 staff in the quarter and a pair of,361 in the final 12 months because of automation.
Santander
Santander Brasil directs its technology investments in direction of automation, personalization, and innovation of services and products.
The technique included billions of {dollars} in infrastructure investments, fintech acquisitions, and capacity-building packages. In 2021, the establishment introduced US$6 billion for digital transformation and technology tasks in Latin America by way of 2024.
In the third quarter of 2025, the financial institution recorded bills (non-investments) of R$73 million associated to enterprise and technology growth, and superior the rollout of the lately launched One App, which brings collectively all of the establishment’s companies in a single utility.
General bills totaled R$6.423 million in Q3 2025, a 0.2% enhance in three months, influenced by larger depreciation and amortization bills and elevated investments in technology. Personnel bills, in flip, decreased by 0.9% through the interval. The financial institution lowered its workforce by 2,200 staff in the quarter.
Like its friends, Santander adopts a hybrid and multi-cloud technique, utilizing Oracle, AWS, and Microsoft. Since 2021, it has employed the Databricks platform to democratize using knowledge and generate analytical insights.
The financial institution additionally maintains a big knowledge heart in Campinas, inaugurated in 2014 with an funding of R$1.1 billion, and with Tier IV certification from the Uptime Institute. Santander claims to be the one financial institution in the area with a Tier 4 knowledge heart.
In August, the Santander group introduced a worldwide settlement with OpenAI to speed up the implementation of generative AI.
The ChatGPT Enterprise service reached 15,000 staff in Europe and the Americas in two months, with a forecast to succeed in 30,000 by the top of the yr. For 2026–2027, the financial institution’s plan is to broaden using AI brokers, remodel processes, and create a “fully conversational” banking system.
“Hyper-personalization and AI are two major drivers for this, along with all the technology that we will increasingly develop with the Santander Group supporting us, and us supporting the Group as a major innovation hub for our business model. Technology plays a significant role in our transformation of spending and expenses,” mentioned Santander Brazil CEO Mário Leão to analysts.
Banco do Brasil
In the third quarter, Banco do Brasil ‘s investments in technology reached R$2 billion for the primary time, in comparison with R$1.8 billion in 2024. From 2016 to September 2025, the financial institution invested R$42.1 billion in this space.
According to the establishment, 9 out of ten buyer transactions are digital.
“The Digital Acceleration Movement (MAD), which currently encompasses around 2,000 employees, will have more than 10,000 employees across all of the Bank’s strategic units by the end of 2026,” the financial institution mentioned.
BB claims to have over 1,600 cataloged analytical options, together with greater than 800 AI fashions, and greater than 1,400 applied. The establishment additionally reviews greater than 8,000 each day cloud-based purposes and companies, a 33% year-over-year enhance in Q3 2025, in addition to 33.1 million energetic customers on digital channels (a 12.7% enhance).
The growth of options entails numerous suppliers, together with companions of the subsidiary BB Tecnologia e Serviços (BBTS), corresponding to IBM, BMC, Oracle, SUSE, Broadcom, Cisco, AWS, SAS, HCL, and Huawei .
For cloud computing, Banco do Brasil (BB) adopts a hybrid and multi-cloud technique, primarily utilizing Oracle, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
Among the developments in this discipline, Oracle NetSuite introduced this month the completion of the cloud banking integration developed with the financial institution.
In Q3 2025, administrative bills totaled R$9.8 billion, a 1.4% enhance quarter-over-quarter, reflecting will increase of 1.9% in personnel bills and 0.4% in different administrative bills.
Over the previous 9 months, bills have risen 5.4%, in accordance with the financial institution, influenced by a 4.64% wage adjustment in September 2024 and “by the continued investments in technology, AI and cybersecurity.”
(The unique model of this content material was written in Portuguese)