NEW YORK (Reuters) -JPMorgan Chase's ( JPM ) artificial intelligence tools enabled it to boost sales to wealthy clients and manage scores of requests from worried customers even during April's market rout, the bank's CEO of asset and wealth management said.

The largest U.S. lender, along with its peers has been ramping up its use of AI. Goldman Sachs ( GS ) is rolling out a generative AI assistant to its bankers, traders and asset managers, while Morgan Stanley ( MS ) developed a chatbot for its financial advisers with OpenAI.

JPMorgan's ( JPM ) AI tools have supercharged the speed at which its bankers could provide research and investment advice to wealthy clients last month at a time when the U.S. tariff announcements erased trillions of dollars from the stock market.

"In the last few weeks, there have been several fluctuations in the market which are not in normal bite sizes, making it very complicated to think about all your clients and all the things required to do," Mary Erdoes said. The "powerful" AI tools helped advisors to quickly handle client requests by pulling data on their trading patterns and anticipating queries, she said. 

In the days surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff announcement last month, U.S. stock markets set a new record for single-day trading volume, and posted some of the sharpest intraday swings of the past 50 years.

The volatility prompted individual investors to call their bankers seeking advice, Erdoes told Reuters.

"When you have a tool that pre-populates all the data and the movement in real time, while also remembering clients' old investment preferences and helps in tailoring a plan for them quickly, it also allows advisors to do much more," she added.

JPMorgan's ( JPM ) so-called Coach AI tool used by private client advisers is quicker at locating content and research to drive conversations with clients. 

"Our advisors are finding the right information up to 95% faster--which means they spend less time searching and more time engaging in meaningful conversations with clients," said Mike Urciuoli, chief information officer at JPMorgan ( JPM ) asset and wealth management.

"It's a great example of how of AI isn't replacing human touch, it's enhancing it," Urciuoli added.

ADDING CLIENTS

The app will help advisers expand their client rosters by 50% in the next three-to-five years by enabling them to take on more clients, with AI handling some of the other research-related work.

JPMorgan Asset & Wealth Management also saw a 20% year-over-year increase in gross sales between 2023-2024, with Gen AI-driven tools which has helped teams focus more effectively on high-impact client work, it said.

"AI has also been handling a lot of anticipatory work, allowing advisors to be prepared for what could have otherwise been a very stressful moment with market movements," Erdoes said.

JPMorgan ( JPM ) had a technology budget of $17 billion last year. The bank already has about 450 potential cases for which it could use AI, and CEO Jamie Dimon expects those potential applications to surge to 1,000 by next year, he said earlier this year.

Portfolio managers in asset management are also using the AI tools, Erdoes said.

The bank's GenAI toolkit which is now deployed on the desktops of more than 200,000 employees, more than half of whom use it several times a day, the bank said. The bank employs almost 320,000 people.

"We are trying to democratize AI and put it in the hands of more employees instead of a select group," Erdoes added.

Harvard Business School recently published a case study on the potential of generative AI which included the tools being used by the 4,000 advisers serving JPMorgan's ( JPM ) high-net-worth private bank clients to study its impact on the bank's business.

The initiatives have already saved the bank nearly $1.5 billion through fraud prevention, personalization, trading, operational efficiencies and credit decisions, JPMorgan ( JPM ) said.