At Bradesco, the technology agenda is advancing "step by step".

When he took over as president of Bradesco at the end of 2023, Marcelo Noronha announced a five-year transformation plan. Among its pillars, he promised to accelerate the technological agenda to address the pressure on profitability and competitiveness in a scenario of high interest rates and the rise of fintechs. Making the bank more technological – and being perceived as such by customers and the market – was defined as a priority from the beginning of his administration.

The execution of this agenda is the responsibility of Cíntia Scovine, the bank's Chief Technology Officer (CTO), who detailed to NeoFeed the progress already made and the main priorities for 2026. After a period focused on building foundations, such as the hiring of more than three thousand IT professionals since 2024, this year marks the transition from testing and proof of concept to the scaling phase.

“Technology is the foundation of everything for the bank's transformation. This year, we are focusing on further reducing lead time , seeking additional productivity gains, strengthening cybersecurity , and advancing automation and cloud acceleration, within an AI First agenda,” says Cíntia, to NeoFeed .

In 2025, investment in technology grew by 22% compared to 2024. And the forecast is that it will grow by another 16% this year. The priority now is to consolidate the execution model at scale and take it to areas with a direct impact on customer experience and revenue. Among them, investments and wealth management .

In this segment, one of the projects is the application of artificial intelligence to evaluate telephone calls made by investment advisors . The tool analyzes adherence to scripts and best practices and suggests improvements for future interactions. The goal is to reduce improvisation and make the advisors ' work more data-driven.

“In the pilot program, the accuracy of the AI-generated scores compared to human evaluation was 84%, which allows for scaling feedback , reducing sampling bias, and supporting the development of over 1,700 advisors with objective data,” says Cíntia.

According to the bank, the project was completed in mid-November 2025 and began to be implemented vertically, and is in the final implementation phase, with completion scheduled for this quarter.

Another area planned for 2026 is the evolution of the investment recommendation system based on artificial intelligence. The technology, already available on the website, is being integrated into the app through BIA, the bank's virtual assistant.

According to Bradesco , this recommendation layer already accounts for more than 65% of the value raised in investment sessions.

“BRAScan is our Netflix-like investment recommendation system. Based on the user's profile, we make recommendations. With BIA asking questions, we will be able to advance even further, and we are building a robo-advisor to make recommendations,” says Cíntia.

"Technological step by step"

The technological agenda is part of the transformation plan announced in 2023, in a context where Bradesco was seen by the market as a bank undergoing technological recovery after losing ground to competitors more advanced in digitalization. The pressure came from both traditional banks and digital institutions, the so-called fintechs .

“The current management ’s stance is more aligned with technological advancement,” says a manager who has invested in Bradesco shares. “And Noronha’s ‘step by step’ approach even in the technological agenda,” he adds, referring to a phrase the current president likes to repeat when talking about Bradesco’s transformation process.

The market has also seen progress. Following the fourth-quarter results, Itaú highlighted that investments continue to weigh on profits, but that this is happening for a good reason. The efficiency ratio improved to 50%, from 52.2% the previous year, showing the progress of the bank's transformation towards efficiency.

Bank of America (BofA) highlighted that after eight quarters of its five-year transformation plan, Bradesco managed to raise its ROE above its cost of capital, exceeding its own expectations in two quarters. The guidance for 2026 is weaker precisely because of the increased investments in technology, which are expected to peak in 2026. However, these investments should continue to yield good results going forward.

Four pillars

Within the five-year plan, the technology is structured around four major fronts. The first is the technological foundation, responsible for the bank's architecture, which is currently 100% cloud-first.

The goal is to reduce delivery time and increase flexibility. In this process, Bradesco ended 2025 with more than 10,500 technology professionals — about 6,500 of them internal — after a 35% increase in the number of developers.

Since 2024, the bank claims to have reduced lead time (total time elapsed between the start of a process and its final completion) by 43% and increased the volume of business features by 118% when comparing the end of 2025 to the end of 2023.

The second pillar is the operational model, which separates transformation initiatives from operational routines, with distinct governance and rhythms, without creating parallel structures. The third front is platform engineering, aimed at scaling and standardizing delivery.

In this context, the bank improved BEX, a portal that brings together tools for engineers, and created BIATech, an initiative that integrates AI directly into the development cycle to increase productivity — from demand design to delivery in production.

The fourth pillar is the AI First strategy, which treats artificial intelligence as infrastructure. This approach is embodied in the enterprise generative AI platform called Bridge, which centralizes governance and scalability of use cases.

Currently, the platform operates with reusable, multi-agent, and real-time voice services, integrating different models with a focus on security, privacy, and compliance . According to the bank, it already supports more than 500 use cases in production, with 70 at scale.

Bradesco states that the results of this agenda are already reflected in the numbers: profit of R$ 24.7 billion in 2025, ROE of 15.2% in the fourth quarter, and a loan portfolio of R$ 1.089 trillion.

One of the examples cited that has contributed to the results is "Mentor AI," used in training credit recovery teams. The tool identifies top-performing professionals, analyzes approaches by client profile, and structures coaching programs. According to the bank, the productivity gain with the use of the solution was 22%.