BCI empowers employees with Microsoft 365 Copilot, realizing 10%-20% productivity boost

In today’s ever-evolving economic landscape, financial services organizations are turning to generative AI-powered solutions to transform business operations and support employee efficiency. British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) is one of the largest institutional investors in Canada. In 2023, the company advanced its AI adoption journey by using Microsoft 365 Copilot and the secure Microsoft Azure ecosystem with Azure OpenAI Service. Of BCI’s initial 300 Copilot users, 84% reported a 10%-20% increase in productivity. The company’s investment in generative AI is driving time savings and creativity, increasing employee engagement and job satisfaction in a highly competitive market.

Advancing financial services with secure generative AI

With $250.4 billion of gross assets under management as of March 31, 2024, BCI provides investment management services for British Columbia’s public sector. The company is headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, with offices in Vancouver, New York, and London. It manages a portfolio of diversified public and private market investments on behalf of its 29 public sector clients. “What’s important to BCI is that we serve the people who serve our communities,” says Tony Payne, Senior Vice President, Technology and Innovation and Chief Technology Officer at BCI. “This includes nurses, police officers, municipalities, and teachers.”

BCI continues to be at the forefront of AI adoption in financial services. Its internal AI innovation team ensures that BCI’s strict security and regulatory requirements are maintained to help protect its investment management services and its clients. In 2023, the company began considering how generative AI-powered tools could accelerate its AI journey and boost employee satisfaction by streamlining operations.

“After BCI shared our priority on AI with Microsoft a year ago, we pursued many possibilities together, ranging from executive meetings to the Copilot for Microsoft365 Early Access Program and rapid-prototype workshops,” says Gargi Bougie, Senior Manager, Service Delivery, Technology at BCI. “The Microsoft team has demonstrated deep interest and curiosity in exploring the AI use cases of BCI, and it continues to present new ideas and options to us.”

Increasing productivity for Copilot users by 10%-20%

BCI became one of Canada’s earliest adopters of Microsoft 365 Copilot, realizing its potential to drive efficiencies and increase employee satisfaction. BCI initially rolled out Copilot to 300 employees but has now rotated the licenses to include more than 570 users across the company, including the C-suite. BCI also turned to the Azure environment to introduce Azure OpenAI Service, which helps employees use large language models while maintaining compliance with privacy regulations. “We appreciate the comprehensive vision that Microsoft has for the end-to-end AI ecosystem, from cloud infrastructure to many AI–powered applications and services,” says Bougie.

The company created opportunities for Copilot users to share best practices and refine prompts, allowing employees to quickly streamline business operations. Because Copilot generates notes and meeting summaries, designated notetakers are no longer required at most BCI meetings. Now, all meeting participants can actively engage in discussions, which facilitates creative problem-solving and saves notetakers around 30-60 minutes per meeting. BCI employees can automate mundane tasks and find information that is stored in dispersed chats or calendars in minutes with Copilot, which has increased job satisfaction for 68% of Copilot users.

In the nine months since rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot, BCI has seen increased levels of employee engagement and productivity. “We ran a Copilot survey recently, and 84% of our respondents reported a 10%-20% productivity increase from using the product,” says Aaron Leskiw, Senior Manager, Digital Workplace at BCI. For an investment manager like BCI, the boost in productivity accelerates complex financial analysis and decision-making.

Saving more than 2,300 person-hours with automation throughout the business

As BCI employees harnessed daily efficiencies with Copilot, the company also began using Azure OpenAI Service and custom AI assistants to automate manual tasks and conduct complex data analysis. “We’ve implemented over 22 solutions that have streamlined operational processes; reduced manual, repetitive tasks; and saved over 2,300 person-hours since the start of the automation program,” says Payne.

Writing a final report for an internal audit had historically been time-consuming, but generative AI simplified the process. The company created setup files in Azure OpenAI Service, and a custom AI assistant draws from those files to compile draft sections of the final report. “This process has reduced the audit report writing efforts by 30% so far and has improved consistency and quality across reports,” says Bougie. BCI’s client partnerships team uses the AI-powered tools to simplify complex investment reporting commentary, making it easier for clients to understand.

The human resources (HR) department saved a month of processing time for a recent employee survey that returned almost 8,000 private comments from across the company. With Azure OpenAI Service, BCI’s HR department could enter comments, preserve privacy and confidentiality, and quickly identify common themes and action items to implement. HR was able to engage with employees within a month of the survey, demonstrating BCI’s commitment to addressing its employees’ concerns.

Driving technology innovation to empower employees

Looking to the future, BCI continues exploring how generative AI can transform its operations and help it attract and retain talented personnel who are dedicated to serving public sector clients in their communities. The company’s collaboration with Microsoft is driving technology innovation in a secure, responsible environment that empowers BCI employees at every level. “What’s unique in this digital transformation is that the CEO and other C-suite executives see how this is going to change how they do business, and it’s creating opportunity for us in new horizons,” says Payne.

By incorporating AI tools, BCI aims to improve the lives of the people it touches—that is, its employees and, in turn, its clients and their beneficiaries across British Columbia. “At the end of the day, AI is not about technology, it’s about people,” says Leskiw. “With technology, we want to give our employees the tools to help them leverage their intellect and creativity, to do more with their day-to-day, and free them up to focus on doing great things.”

Discover more about BCI on LinkedIn.