Synchrony (NYSE: SYF) has named Nimrod Barak as its first chief AI officer, a role that puts a dedicated executive in charge of the consumer financial services company's enterprise artificial intelligence strategy. Barak, who started in the position June 30, 2026, will oversee AI development, governance and deployment across products, operations and employee workflows.
His mandate covers advancing all the pieces that make AI work at scale: agentic AI systems, intelligent automation, and integrating the technology into decision-making and operational processes. For Schenectady's largest private employer, which provides credit and banking products to tens of millions of consumers, the appointment signals that AI has shifted from experimental tools to a core capability with dedicated leadership.
From individual tools to a coordinated strategy
Synchrony announced in a February regulatory filing that Barak officially joined after serving as managing director and head of the AI Center of Excellence and Emerging Technologies at Cit, where he spent more than 20 years leading engineering teams. His background includes work applying AI to business processes and customer experience initiatives at a large financial institution.
The company said Barak will be responsible for AI strategy, governance, and execution-including the continued rollout of Synchrony GPT, an enterprise chatbot introduced in 2024. Synchrony said nearly 100% of its professional workforce has used its AI tools, and that 90% of employees trust the company to use AI responsibly.
Synchrony places particular emphasis on agentic commerce, where AI systems support and execute tasks within digital purchasing and financial workflows. The company positions its role at the intersection of consumer finance and retail as an opportunity to apply AI across both consumer interactions and those of the hundreds of thousands of small businesses it supports.
"Over the past several years, Synchrony has been thoughtfully rolling out new AI capabilities across the organization and preparing for the next phase of agentic commerce," said Florin Arghirrescu, engineer and executive vice president, and CTO at Synchrony, in a statement. "We look forward to Nimrod's leadership to accelerate AI adoption as part of our commitment to responsible innovation built on decades of trust with consumers and partners."
A different starting point
Barak enters at a different place than many AI executives. The company has already reached broad AI adoption; his job is to coordinate the scattered tools into a coherent strategy. The risk isn't in introducing AI but in scaling it beyond individual products.
Financial services firms are moving past generative AI pilots toward enterprise deployment, and governance is becoming the differentiator. How a company's AI system handles consumer financial data, decides on credit product eligibility, or assists in purchases carries regulatory consequences. Consumers and merchant partners need the trust Synchrony says it has built over decades-and its AI practices must not erode that trust.
Why this matters for executives and strategy leaders
Anyone building an AI roadmap at a large company faces the same problem Synchrony had: dispersed tools, strong user adoption, a notion that an AI strategy needs a single senior owner. The appointment suggests that demonstrating ROI from AI often requires a designated executive with budget and span of control to coordinate the necessary pieces-data access, model governance, integration into products.
That the appointee comes with prior experience running an AI center within a comparable financial institution reflects where the industry has landed. It also signals to other firms that executive responsibility for AI is no longer a side duty for a CIO.
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