CBA inks deal with AWS for cloud services, rolls out AI agent for business customers
Commonwealth Bank is introducing an AI agent for tens of thousands of business customers that will handle queries and provide ChatGPT-style responses.
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CBA is looking to show its might in the artificial intelligence race as it rolls out an AI agent for tens of thousands of business customers that will handle queries and provide ChatGPT-style responses.
The move is part of a new five-year deal inked with AWS, which will remain the big four bank’s largest cloud provider, and provide more computing power and accelerate the migration of its workloads to the cloud.
Under the deal the nation’s largest bank will look to beef up its tech offering with the launch of CommBiz Gen AI, an AI-powered agent available to tens of thousands of its business customers.
The bank’s chief technology officer Rodrigo Castillo said the move was part of a broader vision to hyper-personalise banking.
“Customers can (now) direct questions to us via the chat functionality to make payments faster, transact with confidence and save time,” he said.
“AI is enabling new experiences for customers delivered faster than before, providing a frictionless experience to build and release new AI-powered products and features for our customers in a safe, responsible way.”
The CBA tech boss said the new deal paved the way for CBA to remain at the forefront of AI in Australia.
It comes as Australian banks are competing heavily on the AI front, investing hundreds of millions to use the relatively new form of technology to improve their offerings.
In August last year, ANZ kicked its answer to ChatGPT to the kerb as it invested in thousands of Copilot for Microsoft 365 licences for its staff.
The bank developed an AI centre in-house in Melbourne and committed to training 3000 staff on the platform.
Meanwhile NAB has transitioned 84 per cent of its digital infrastructure to public cloud offerings from AWS and Microsoft Azure as it looks to strengthen its offerings and embed more AI into its products.
Mr Castillo said CBA was committed to being one of the first to test and experiment with new AI tools.
“As new technology emerges, we’re well placed to adopt it quickly, putting market leading experiences in the hands of customers sooner,” he said.
“Our technology partnerships combined with our team of world-class engineers and AI specialists means we can deliver customer solutions faster than before.”
AWS head of financial services Jamie Simon, who helped ink the deal, said CBA was one of AWS’s most important customers in Australia.
“CBA is absolutely a very strategic customer in our Australian business and we have a huge, huge focus on making sure that they’re successful,” he said.
The new deal means CBA could now move digital infrastructure to the cloud at double the pace, allowing it to accelerate its adoption of AI.
The bank has more than 2000 AI models now in operation.
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Originally published as CBA inks deal with AWS for cloud services, rolls out AI agent for business customers
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