Since joining Bank of Georgia in 2022, Mikheil Nadareishvili has transformed AI from a specialist capability into a contributor to business performance across the bank. AI now accounts for roughly 5% of operating profit, non-risk AI impact has increased tenfold in two years, and weekly AI usage has risen from 10% to 55% across the organisation.
“A great AI model without business impact is a failure” is the principle that has shaped Mikheil’s approach since becoming Chief Analytics Officer at Bank of Georgia.
His ambition was twofold:
- Make the bank the region’s best place to work in AI
- Make AI an integral organisational capability.
Three years later, the results span commercial performance, workforce adoption, talent, governance, and proprietary technology.
Making Business Impact the Deliverable
Mikheil changed an operating model in which analytics teams traditionally built models before handing them to the business. Instead, business stakeholders became involved from the beginning, while data and AI professionals became accountable for realised outcomes.
- Annual impact from non-risk AI increased from GEL 3 million in 2023 to GEL 30 million in 2025, with GEL 50 million targeted by the end of 2026.
- AI contributes approximately 5% of operating profit.
- 80% of AI use cases reach live processes, compared with a cited industry benchmark of 20%.
- 98% of retail unsecured loan underwriting is automated.
- A recommendation engine has contributed to 10% sales growth.
- A Georgian-speaking AI bot handles 67% of customer chat traffic.
- AI initiatives have contributed to reducing total bank costs by 3%.
When demand began exceeding his team’s capacity several times over, Mikheil again looked beyond simply adding headcount. He backed DS-Agent, an in-house multi-agent system that enables two people to undertake work previously requiring four, in approximately two-thirds of the time.
“Mikheil has delivered staggering, undeniable results over his three-year tenure. Growing non-risk AI business impact 10x, driving AI to contribute 5% of the total bank operating profit, and pushing weekly AI tool adoption to 55% bank-wide represents phenomenal strategic scaling.” – Judges’ comments
Democratising AI Across 9,000 Employees
Mikheil’s strategy extends well beyond his 80-person data and AI team. Through the GenAI Adoption Programme and chat.bog.ge, any of Bank of Georgia’s 9,000 employees can create AI assistants. The programme follows a ‘3Ds’ framework of Decentralisation, Democratisation, and Distillation, supported by around 100 AI Ambassadors.
Within six months, weekly AI tool usage increased from 10% to 55% bank-wide, reaching 80% among back-office employees. Almost 400 employee-built AI assistants are now in daily use.
Governance has been designed to enable that adoption. Mikheil’s team developed an enterprise framework covering safe use, data handling, risk classification, and escalation across Legal, Compliance, and InfoSec. The submission reports a year of scaling without a major incident.
Building the Place People Want to Join
Mikheil has applied high standards to the culture surrounding AI. His 80-person team is 45% female, while women hold 35% of management positions. The Leaderator graduate programme receives close to 1,000 applications per intake and achieves 75% three-year retention.
Korn Ferry’s 2025 engagement survey placed the team above global norms on 15 of 20 dimensions, including 87% favourability for psychological safety and 85% for trust in managers.
As David Davitashvili, Head of Data and IT and Bank of Georgia board member, said: “In three years, Mikheil transformed AI from a niche specialisation into an organisation-wide deeply integrated capability that is impacting all major business lines and is contributing meaningfully to our operating profit.”
Mikheil has invested where the wider technology market does not adequately serve Georgia. His team developed an in-house Georgian voice AI pipeline operating at one-sixth the cost of commercial alternatives and processing more than 100,000 hours of audio each month. These achievements illustrate Mikheil’s broader leadership philosophy: world-class AI capability need not be confined to the world’s largest technology markets.
At Bank of Georgia, he has demonstrated what happens when AI leadership combines technical ambition with talent, governance, widespread adoption, and, above all, accountability for business value.
