Bank Of Canada Research On AI Adoption Across Canadian Firms

June 2, 2026 | NCFA Resource | Artificial Intelligence And Data

Benchmarking AI Use Across Canadian Businesses

On June 2, 2026, the Bank of Canada published Canadian firm AI adoption survey data from its December 2025 Business Leaders’ Pulse. The research gives fintechs, investors, financial institutions, regulators, and policy teams a useful benchmark for assessing where Canadian businesses stand on AI use, deployment, capital spending, and employment expectations.

The resource draws on 314 firm responses. It separates personal AI use by business leaders from operational AI use inside firms. Many Canadian leaders already use AI at work, but fewer firms use AI in production, service delivery, or core business workflows.

What It Does In Practice

The research helps readers compare AI awareness with real deployment:

• 75% of surveyed business leaders personally use AI during a typical work week
• 8% of surveyed firms report significant AI use in producing goods or delivering services
• 21% report moderate use
• 29% report experimental or very infrequent use

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The Bank of Canada also shows where AI use starts. Text generation ranks as the most common current application. Visual content creation and machine learning based data processing follow. Over the next three years, firms expect more use of data processing applications, which may matter more for financial services than basic content generation.

For fintechs and financial institutions, AI awareness no longer creates differentiation on its own. The harder work involves choosing real workflows, testing productivity gains, managing risk, training staff, improving data quality, and deciding where AI deserves capital spending.

Who Gets Value

Fintech founders can use the paper to test whether customer demand has reached live deployment or is still stuck in pilot mode. That helps product teams avoid building around hype alone.

Investors can use the data to assess where demand may grow for AI governance tools, workflow automation, data infrastructure, compliance technology, customer service systems, and implementation support.

Financial institutions can compare their own AI programs against broader Canadian firm expectations. The paper gives banks, credit unions, insurers, and wealth firms a clearer view of how business leaders think about investment and employment effects over the next year and the next three years.

Regulators and policymakers can use the paper to understand practical adoption barriers. Firms that do not use AI most often cite lack of usefulness for their operations. Other barriers include skills, software compatibility, ethics, cost, regulatory obstacles, and data quality.

Strengths And Limits

The strength of this resource is its Canadian evidence base. It also separates personal AI use from business deployment, which makes the adoption picture more useful.

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The paper also connects AI adoption with capital spending and employment expectations. Firms expect AI to have a more positive effect on capital expenditures over three years than over the next 12 months. Employment expectations look more cautious. Over three years, 18% of firms expect to hire fewer staff because of AI, while 9% expect to hire more.

The limit is survey design. The Business Leaders’ Pulse helps assess aggregate economic conditions relevant to Canadian GDP. It doesn't produce population representative estimates of firm behaviour. Readers should treat the results as useful directional evidence, not a full census of Canadian AI adoption.

Key Resources

Bank of Canada AI adoption survey (primary staff analytical paper on firm AI adoption, capital spending, and employment expectations)

Bank of Canada central banking AI resource (resource on AI adoption inside central banking and controlled deployment)

Canada AI productivity analysis (analysis on AI adoption, productivity, capital, and execution)

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