NAB is laying the groundwork for ‘major transformation’ using artificial intelligence, and banks have multiple implementation plans underway.
CEO Ross McEwan, who returned from a briefing in the US, said his team is developing a deployment strategy that rolls out every one, three and six months.
McEwan gave few details about NAB’s actual strategy, but stressed the need for “appropriate guardrails” before the bank “does long-term planning afterwards.”
“That way,[the tools]will be available to more of our colleagues, making it easier for them to do their jobs and help our customers,” McEwan said.
He said NAB will take a “crawl first” approach to providing AI operations.
NAB Chief Data and Analytics Officer Christian Nellisen said: iTnews AI technologies have been around for a while, but “we are in the midst of an explosive boom with the growing popularity and interest in things like ChatGPT.”
“Like many companies, NAB makes extensive use of chatbot capabilities internally to assist customers, and we are constantly looking at new technologies and how they can help us deliver a better experience. We do,” said Nelissen.
Nellisen added that the bank has identified and is “investigating” opportunities, although it is still “the dawn of generative AI.”
“We recently created an internal framework for our colleagues to support their AI quest in a safe and structured way that focuses on our innovation efforts,” said Nelissen.
“In addition, our leadership team invests time in exploring AI capabilities and identifying use cases.
“It is also important to have an approach that allows us to meet customer expectations, regulatory obligations and our own data ethics standards.”
Rival Westpac has already seen a 46% productivity gain from its AI-augmented coding experiments, while ANZ is leveraging generative AI to explore different use cases, including code testing doing.
CBA is also creating headwinds in the AI space with its partnership with H2O.ai, and Macquarie Bank recently launched a new AI venture with Google Cloud.
Back at NAB, McEwan quickly reassured his 36,000 employees that AI could create jobs, not jobs.
He points to his time as CEO at The Royal Bank of Scotland, where he introduced the first chatbot and led to the formation of at least two new roles.
“From there, two very different jobs were quickly created. First, the person training the bot had to make sure the data coming in was actually correct. There were people who did,” he said.
“These two jobs were brand new jobs. I think it’s going to require some very interesting skills in the way.’That.
“But as a bank, we need to make sure customer data is protected, and test everything to see if the machine actually reflects reality.
“The machine itself is learning, but it gets smarter and smarter over time.”
McEwan agreed with industry insiders that the emergence and rapid rise of generative AI is similar to the introduction of the Internet.
“It’s one of the game-changing technologies, and it’s so big, that’s why I brought the whole management team to the United States,” he said.
“I mean, I think you either come forward and use it to move your organization forward, or we have a company that does that.
He added that regulators would “obviously monitor very closely” emerging technologies to ensure they are not used for malicious purposes.
“That’s why it’s so important to maintain a big fence around your organization’s customer data,” he said.
“We should use it to improve our customers, and that will frame the policies we put in place.”
McEwan also added that AI will make bankers “just as valuable, if not more, in the future.”
“People who can talk to customers, take all the information and data, and be able to explain it to them in a way that makes sense to them is going to be very important.”
