State Street Corp., founded in 1792, and artificial intelligence haven't often been mentioned in the same sentence -- until now. The bank on Wednesday unveiled Quantextual Idea Lab, which uses machine learning and natural language processing to help clients better organize and extract information from their reams of research. The web platform is the latest piece of State Street's digital transformation, an effort to make the custody bank into a company that can compete in an era of heightened competition from technology-savvy rivals. Quantextual is part of Project Beacon, a five-year plan aimed at cutting costs, speeding up services, and most ambitiously, turning State Street from a bank that tracks data into one that converts information into insights customers value. "Anyone who doesn't do things faster and better will find himself in a world of hurt," said Jay Hooley, the Boston-based bank's chief executive officer. State Street's technology obsession is hardly unique in finance.

Institutional clients are swimming in massive amounts of data that mere mortals can't handle effectively. That is why custody banks are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence and robotics to help their clients wade through it. Such clients want their custody banks to offer better data aggregation and analytics and more automation, according to a recent report by BNP Paribas and the research firm Tabb Group. The authors surveyed a group of sell-side senior executives at midsize banks and brokerages in the United States regarding their technology priorities and their expectations of custodians. "Clients can analyze data and react much more quickly with robotics than the current systems they are running," said Bruno Campenon, a BNP Paribas Securities Services executive who oversees the financial intermediary and corporate client lines.