Royal Bank of Canada has achieved a historic milestone, briefly overtaking Goldman Sachs in market value earlier this week. As reported by Financial Post, RBC's market capitalization, converted into U.S. dollars, reached $263.3 billion, making it larger than both Wells Fargo and Citigroup by tens of billions of dollars. The bank is now worth about 40% more than Toronto-Dominion Bank, its nearest Canadian rival, representing a dramatic shift from just three years ago when RBC was only about 10% larger than TD. This marks the first time RBC has arrived at roughly the same valuation after more than two years of widening its lead over Canadian rivals, while Goldman itself has benefited from record equity-trading results. Both firms have experienced recent stock pullbacks, though Goldman's decline has been more pronounced as CEO David Solomon noted softer fixed-income trading and higher expenses.
Toronto-Dominion Bank has achieved a significant milestone in artificial intelligence banking, ranking as the world's 10th most advanced bank for AI according to the 2026 Evident AI Banking Index. As reported by Financial Post, TD jumped three spots from 13th place in 2025 to secure its position in the top 10, demonstrating substantial progress in AI innovation, talent development, leadership, and transparency over the past 12 months. The bank generated $195 million in AI value over nine months, with approximately 20-25% of its AI use cases reporting measurable impact. TD's advancement was driven by its in-house AI model launched last year that utilizes internal bank data for predictions, significantly boosting AI returns. The bank has been increasingly applying AI to large-scale workflows to reduce costs and accelerate service delivery, with its first agentic AI application, launched in May, deployed on 100% of new personal mortgages to scan documents, calculate income, verify requirements, and reduce mortgage processing time from 15 hours to an average of three minutes.
Royal Bank of Canada successfully defended its position as the third-most advanced bank for AI for the fourth consecutive year, according to the Evident Insights research. As reported by Financial Post, RBC's continued success stems from its ability to transform advanced AI research investments into proprietary capabilities that can be applied across the business. The bank has been making significant progress toward its AI efficiency goals, with CEO Dave McKay noting that the firm is making progress toward its goal of as much as $1 billion in annual efficiencies from AI technology. RBC said at its March 2025 investor day that it expects AI to generate between $700 million and $1 billion in enterprise value by fiscal 2027, with the bank later clarifying that the target excludes investments in areas including data, computing infrastructure, proprietary models, governance and talent. Evident confirmed RBC remained on track toward that goal through its third quarter.
The 2026 Evident AI Banking Index assessed 50 banks worldwide on AI talent, innovation, leadership and transparency, with eight of this year's top 10 banks headquartered in North America, up from six when the index launched in 2023. According to Financial Post, North American banks have benefited from their scale, proximity to major hyperscalers and an early start on AI investment. Canadian banks are among the more willing to disclose their AI returns, with 12 of the 50 surveyed lenders now disclosing either realized or projected returns from their AI investments, up from eight last year. Three of the five Canadian banks in the index have publicly disclosed these targets, with TD targeting $200 million in annualized revenue productivity and $100 million in annualized cost savings from AI over the medium term at its September 2025 investor day, later raising its medium-term target to $500 million across revenue gains and cost savings. BMO expects to generate more than $1 billion from AI by fiscal 2030, while the average bank's score in Evident's index increased 26% from a year earlier, nearly three times the average pace of improvement between 2023 and 2025.
Other Canadian banks showed notable improvements in the ranking. As reported by Financial Post, CIBC's AI talent ranking rose 10 spots this year, with its leadership position climbing into the top 10 and its internal AI tool among the industry's top performers, helping bump it up one spot to 21st. Bank of Montreal ranked 20th, down one position from last year, while Scotiabank slipped one place to 30th overall. The report highlights that Canadian banks are well-positioned to advance since Canada is the only region where all banks have guardrails and controls at use-case levels, enabling safe and effective deployment of agentic AI tools at large scale. Evident's managing director Daniel Shackleford Capel noted that sometimes what appears as a ranking decrease is not banks doing less, but others moving even faster, with everyone having moved really quickly.
