TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Mizuho Financial Group Inc., one of Japan's three megabanks, said Thursday it will fully launch a three-month program next month to train sales and administrative staff as artificial intelligence engineers.

The program, dubbed Mizuho AI Bootcamp, aims to accelerate the development of business systems tailored to on-the-ground challenges by drawing on the financial industry knowledge and experience of reskilled employees.

Training employees without technical backgrounds to become AI engineers typically takes about a year and a half, but the process can be shortened by using AI to develop systems, Mizuho said.

In a pilot program launched in June, all five participating employees, some of whom had no programming experience, met the required standards and moved into engineering positions in September, the bank said.

Starting in November, the program will cover 20 employees, with a goal of training 100 in the near term. Details of the salary system have yet to be finalized.

With AI adoption expanding across the financial sector, competition for specialized talent has been intensifying.

Meanwhile, the growing use of AI in sales, administrative and planning departments is reducing working hours and increasing the need to redeploy employees to new roles, prompting companies to step up reskilling efforts.