{"id":563410,"date":"2026-07-23T00:15:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/563410\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T00:15:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:15:24","slug":"bank-of-ireland-appoints-former-citi-executive-as-ai-chief-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/563410\/","title":{"rendered":"Bank of Ireland appoints former Citi executive as AI chief \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/bank-of-ireland\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/bank-of-ireland\">Bank of Ireland<\/a> has appointed Prag Sharma, a former director of emerging technologies at Citigroup, as its new chief artificial intelligence officer. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sharma will  take on the newly-created role when he begins in October. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He \u201cwill lead the Group\u2019s AI delivery and enablement,\u201d Bank of Ireland said, \u201cand will also be involved in leading out on our emerging technology direction in conjunction with group strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cHe will join the Enterprise Services leadership team, working alongside our Digital &amp; Data, Security, and IT leaders to embed AI across all areas,\u201d a spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sharma joins Ireland\u2019s largest bank after nearly a decade at the Dublin office of Citigroup, one of the largest US banks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Previous roles he has held at Citigroup include its global head of AI and senior vice president of its innovation labs. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He established Citigroup\u2019s Global AI Centre of Excellence, which delivered products across 96 countries, before serving as director of Citi Institute\u2019s Future of Finance think tank, Bank of Ireland said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Before this, Sharma worked in Deloitte\u2019s advanced analytics consulting practice and Accenture\u2019s integrated markets group, both in Dublin during the early 2000s and 2010s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Between these roles, he worked as a programme manager at a UCD research centre and cofounded a software analytics venture.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Bank of Ireland described Sharma as \u201can accomplished AI leader with deep technical knowledge and extensive global experience.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ciar\u00e1n Coyle, the lender\u2019s chief operating officer, described the appointment as \u201ccritical\u201d. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sharma \u201cbrings the vision, leadership and expertise required to safely accelerate our AI transformation and unlock meaningful value across the Group,\u201d Coyle said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cWith a proven track record of delivering impactful AI globally &#8230; [Sharma\u2019s] appointment also reflects our ambition to position Bank of Ireland at the forefront of responsible AI innovation and adoption,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sharma earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in electronic engineering in 2000, a PhD in computer vision and pattern recognition in 2004 and a master of business administration (MBA) in 2013 all from UCD.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He continues to sit on UCD\u2019s governing authority and its strategy oversight subcommittee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bank of Ireland has appointed Prag Sharma, a former director of emerging technologies at Citigroup, as its new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,7863,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-563410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-bank-of-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}