CBA to launch CommBank Customer Copilot

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia plans to launch its own CommBank Customer Copilot and also has ambitions to develop an AI "banker" that can offer tailored insights and take verbal commands.

CBA's South Eveleigh office
CBA Newsroom

At a 'reimagining banking' themed presentation, group chief information officer Gavin Munroe laid out the bank's technology ambitions for the next year and beyond.

Speaking at CBA's South Eveleigh office in inner Sydney, Munroe disclosed work on what he called the "CommBank Customer Copilot.”

“We have to be on the copilot bandwagon," he said.

"What that is, in the first iteration is going to be a basically an intuitive way to communicate to the bank, in your mobile app or whatever interface you use."

He said the first generation will be able to offer “generic” insights available to the bank such as interest rates on mortgages or a customer’s credit card interest rate.

But Munroe added that "once we teach [the copilot] a little bit about your banking habits, point it at your transactional banking” records and accounting and budgeting tools, the customer will be able to gain deeper financial insights and ask more complex questions.

“We'll educate the large language model and plug in smaller language models [so you can] ask it, 'Hey what did I spend on holiday in New Zealand last month?' and it will be able to tell you that, or 'Hey, if I've got a new credit card that was 0.5 percent interest rate, how much would have saved over seven months?'

“It has context of financial budgeting, it has concepts of your accounts, your transactions, and can bring them to you.”

Beyond this CBA plans wants to create a “full co-banker pilot" that will act as a personalised interface to transact or utilise banking services.

“The point behind this is we'll be exposing capabilities that are in the bank today that traditionally have sat in silos to an interface that you can interact with it verbally," Munroe said.

“So, we'll make it easy to interact with a bank, but also have the insights you need to be able to make decisions.”

Munroe said it's hoped the initial launch will be “early next year or middle of next year”.

“I think it's an exciting next generation on where we think this is going”.

Github Copilots

Munroe also said work on with Github Copilot, an AI pair-programming tool, is expanding.

“We've all heard about how GenAI is going to change software development.

“We piloted this with 100 people, we're going to move that to 1000 people soon, and that's optimising how we develop code and optimising the path to go-live.

“That’s just one piece I'm actually more excited about changing how we deliver software”.

Using generative AI, Munroe said that "the definition of what an application looks like will change, [and] the interface of the web applications will reflect the change."

"We'll flatten the organisation, we'll simplify the organisation but actually expose more capability, so that's a lot of change," he said.

“We are excited about what it can bring, because I think it will change a lot of how we develop software and speed to market for the customer.”