JPMorgan marshals an army of developers to automate high finance

(FILES) This file photo taken on July 13, 2012 shows people reflected in the glass at the entrance to the JP Morgan Chase World Headquarters on Park Avenue in New York. Wall Street stocks rose early on February 3, 2017 on a solid US jobs report as shares of large banks rallied on news the Trump administration will roll back financial regulations. The January US employment report included a better-than-expected 227,000 new jobs last month, keeping up the positive trends from the Obama years into the start of the term of President Donald Trump.Large banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America rose almost two percent as administration officials signaled that Trump will order a review of the Dodd-Frank law enacted after the 2008 financial crisis. / AFP PHOTO / Timothy A. CLARY

At JPMorgan Chase & Co, a learning machine is parsing financial deals that once kept legal teams busy for thousands of hours. 

The program, called COIN, for Contract Intelligence, does the mind-numbing job of interpreting commercial-loan agreements that, until the project went online in June, consumed 360,000 hours of lawyers’ time annually. The software reviews documents in seconds, is less error-prone and never asks for vacation.