CEO StageNovember 26, 202511:15

CEOs Vision on AI Adoption

Olivier Gavalda, CEO - Crédit Agricole • Olivier Sichel, CEO - Caisse des Dépôts Group • Emilie Sidiqian, CEO - Salesforce France

My Review

An interesting session because while all 3 CEOs agree on the profound change AI brings, the Crédit Agricole and Salesforce approaches quickly diverge: where Salesforce talks about 'virtual colleague', echoing other sessions, Crédit Agricole insists on Human In The Loop—without fully knowing by session's end whether this is a genuine conviction, a constraint, or simply limited belief in AI's potential.

Key Points

1CEO-Level Strategic Ownership Required for AI Success: AI represents a fundamental paradigm shift requiring CEO-level strategic ownership, not an IT department initiative. Organizations treating AI as a technology tool rather than business transformation face primary failure risk. Successful transformation requires CEO commitment to organizational redesign, continuous learning investment (8-12% of workforce time annually), and integration into board-level governance.
2Three Strategic Pillars for Financial Institutions: Financial institutions should implement three strategic pillars: (1) speed and agility to compete with digital-native competitors through 50% time-to-market reduction; (2) cost efficiency targeting 20% administrative reduction by 2028 with 50% compliance efficiency gains; (3) enhanced client relationships through AI-augmented advisors maintaining human touch and personalization as competitive differentiator.
3The Agentic Enterprise Model: The 'agentic enterprise' model positions AI as workplace colleague rather than tool, requiring clear job scope definition, accuracy verification, human oversight, and continuous optimization. The Adecco case study demonstrates this approach achieved 25% case automation while maintaining 4.5/5 customer satisfaction and rapid employee adoption across 6,000 people.
4Data Security as Competitive Differentiator: Data security and trusted environments serve as primary competitive differentiator and customer concern, particularly in regulated banking sector. Organizations should make security a 'by design' architecture principle and platform selection criterion rather than compliance afterthought, addressing cyber threats occurring every 11 seconds.
5National AI Democratization Strategy: National AI democratization requires government-coordinated infrastructure supporting startups to IPO stage, SME capability-building through roadshows (Caisse des Dépôts plans 10,000 visits), and regional deployment paralleling successful broadband infrastructure programs. AI adoption should not concentrate among large enterprises but extend across organization sizes and geographies.