Customer safety, convenience and recognition boosted by early implementation of Gen AI

Commonwealth Bank is one of only a few banks globally to provide customer-facing messaging services powered by generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI).

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has today outlined how artificial intelligence is helping to transform the experiences it delivers to its 10 million-plus customers.

At a strategic update in Sydney, the Bank showcased the role technology and AI are playing in delivering a number of improved outcomes for customers, including:

• A 50 per cent reduction in customer scam losses, aided by the implementation and use of safety and security features which use AI, including NameCheck, CallerCheck and CustomerCheck;
• A 30 per cent drop in customer-reported frauds due to measures like Gen AI-powered suspicious transaction alerts; and,
• AI-powered app messaging helping to reduce call centre wait times by 40 per cent over the last financial year.

CBA also outlined some of the potential future benefits it expected AI to deliver, including significant time savings through automated annual reviews for business customers and bankers.

CBA CEO Matt Comyn said building deeper customer relationships remained at the centre of the Bank's strategy, with AI playing an important role in delivering superior customer experiences.

"With more than one in three Australians and almost one in four businesses considering us their main financial institution, we have a huge customer base to serve. Their preferences and expectations continue to shift, and we aim to meet them by delivering distinct, differentiated and compelling propositions.

"Technology, and AI in particular, are critical in meeting this ambition. AI allows us to deliver better experiences to more customers at a faster rate, and we're already seeing significant benefits in a variety of use cases."

Using Gen AI to tackle fraud and deliver superior messaging services for retail and business customers

CBA processes and analyses more than 20 million payments a day. With the aid of Gen AI, the Bank is now flagging thousands of transactions that look suspicious and sending 20,000 proactive warning alerts per day to retail customers via the app. The initiative has played a central role in reducing customer-reported fraud by 30 per cent, and the Bank will now scale the service to 35,000 proactive alerts a day.

The Bank has also introduced Gen AI to its customer-facing messaging services, one of only a few banks globally to have taken this step.

Messaging is a service channel increasingly popular with retail customers who use it to make more than 50,000 enquiries a day - a five-fold increase on usage five years ago. The introduction of new machine learning technologies, including Gen AI, into CBA's messaging infrastructure is expected to increase the speed, quality, and precision of responses customers get and help resolve the 10 per cent of enquiries the messaging platform cannot currently answer.

CBA is also introducing Gen AI-powered messaging to support the needs of its business customers. The messaging service will help tens of thousands of business customers make payments faster, transact with confidence, and save time and effort, as the chatbot serves up immediate, real-time responses to enquiries.

Using AI to save time for business customers

Loan applications and annual credit reviews are also being simplified and streamlined by AI, helping Australian small business customers access capital faster.

With loan applications, documents will be pre-populated using the customer's own information. The experience avoids rework, speeds up the application and review process, and can enable conditional approval in less than 10 minutes.

For annual reviews, the introduction of AI is expected to reduce the exercise from around 14 hours to two hours.

Best in class: implementing guardrails for safe implementation of Gen AI

To safely manage the rollout of customer facing Gen AI, CBA has implemented 11 guardrails to protect its models from risks related to malicious inputs and misleading outputs.

The Bank, which in 2024 purchased the equivalent of 100 per cent renewable electricity for its Australian operations, including its Australian data centres, sources much of its AI computing capacity from third party providers. A number of CBA's computing capacity providers have made commitments to source renewable or low emissions energy.

CBA has a longstanding AI governance framework, and was this year ranked by the Evident AI Index as the number one bank in APAC (#5 globally) for AI maturity.

Go to CBA Newsroom for the latest news and announcements from Commonwealth Bank.

Tags

• Innovation
• Technology
• Artificial intelligence

Things you should know

• Media releases are prepared without considering an individual reader's objectives, financial situation or needs. Readers should consider the appropriateness to their circumstances. Visit Important Information to access Product Disclosure Statements or Terms and Conditions which are currently available electronically for products of the Commonwealth Bank Group, along with the relevant Financial Services Guide. Target Market Determinations are available here. Loan applications are subject to credit approval. Interest rates are correct at the time they are published and are subject to change. Fees and charges may apply.