A year into the current AI revolution, we all understand more clearly how organizations can derive practical business value from generative AI and the big, revolutionary language models that underpin it. We also see fantastic examples of pioneering businesses and governments realizing this value right here in Australia and New Zealand.
At Microsoft, we believe there are four key areas of opportunity where our latest AI innovations can be used to help responsibly address long-standing organizational priorities. These areas enrich the employee experience, reinvent customer engagement, reshape business processes and bend the innovation curve.
One of the most prominent and progressive organizations making progress on all of these fronts is the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CommBank). As Gavin Munroe, the bank’s group director for technology and group chief information officer, explained today during our AI Tour in Sydney, AI has been a central strategic objective at CommBank for several years .
The bank rightly views technology as a powerful tool to improve customer experience and optimize internal processes, while managing it responsibly to ensure it delivers better outcomes for customers and the community.
Improve outcomes for customers and staff
When it comes to reinventing customer engagement, CommBank uses AI to protect its customers from fraud, scams and financial abuse.
NameCheck has prevented more than 14,000 fraudulent payments with an estimated value of more than $48 million and reduced erroneous payments by more than $199 million (March to December 2023).
The bank specifically uses generative AI to deliver highly personalized experiences to customers, such as personalized notifications through its app. It is also testing the use of generative AI to power a question-and-answer tool that will enable its retail and business call center staff to respond to policy and procedure questions more quickly, and will also enable mortgage brokers to better access information to make faster decisions when assisting their clients. .
In another advancement, CommBank uses AI to read, analyze and process customer documentation faster and more accurately than humans. This allows the bank to halve the time it takes to verify a person’s income when processing a loan, for example.
These tools also benefit staff, who can spend less time on repetitive tasks and focus more on high-quality conversations with customers.
Accelerate innovation, responsibly
CommBank is also using the new AI-powered generative Copilot for Microsoft 365 to simplify internal operations and innovate. Three hundred bank employees have had early access to the technology since the end of 2023 and are using it for tasks such as accelerating market research and text summarization.
As CBA works to expand learning across the Group, initial feedback has been positive. A survey of the bank’s early adopters found that 85% would not want to return to work without Copilot for Microsoft 365 and 96% said they were more productive.
The bank’s team was among the first in Australia to also trial GitHub Copilot, with the aim of delivering code faster, protecting the bank and doing more for its customers. CommBank began testing the service with 200 people and found that 75 percent of its engineers found it “very useful.” They accepted nearly 80,000 lines of code recommended by GitHub CoPilot, a third of all recommendations made.
Finally, it is important to note that CommBank has robust data safety and security frameworks and governance in place to guide its use of AI.
The bank has also played a leading role in developing Australia’s national approach to the responsible and ethical use of AI. In fact, it was recently ranked first in the world for its leadership in responsible AI in the Evident AI Index for banks. By focusing on innovation and responsibility, CommBank benefits from a virtuous cycle.
On behalf of Microsoft, I would like to thank Gavin for sharing CommBank’s experiences and being such a valued long-term partner. The bank truly demonstrates how AI can be adopted at scale in a way that is forward-thinking and beneficial to all stakeholders.
