CBA’s Copilot work starts to yield results

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has revealed its Copilot for Microsoft 365 integration has led to 85 percent of employees stating they wouldn’t want to go back to working without the capability and 96 percent said they were more productive.

Speaking at Microsoft’s AI Tour in Sydney on Wednesday, CBA’s chief information officer, Gavin Munroe said the capabilities were rolled out to 300 CBA employees and used to simplify internal operations and innovate.

He said he wanted to make the new feature “data-driven” to strengthen the bank’s business case of implementing the technology.

“We did our poor man survey and we said if we were to give you a $50 coupon for lunch every month, or give you a Copilot license, which one do you want and 75 percent said they would want to a Copilot license,” Munroe said.

Within the 75 percent, “50 percent of them said it made them more creative” and 9 percent it made them more productive. 

“We double clicked on that 50 percent and 70 percent said they spent less time for content or browsing for information and 50 percent say they use Copilot to help analyse data in their role.”

From a pool of around 200 CBA staff who took part in a 12-week trial under its Copilot for Github work, 75 percent of engineers found it helpful and accepted nearly 80,000 lines of code that the Copilot recommended, totalling around a third of all the recommendations made.

He said the bank is now “looking for those types of associates that have that low-level work that they can apply Copilot to and it actually can help drive efficiency in volumes in this space.” 

“AI has been integral for CBA strategy for many years. We've invested a lot of money in it and we're continuing to invest our money in it,” Munroe said. 

“With the introduction of generative AI, it's just reaffirmed our position and we see it as a critical enabler for making our customer's lives better and improving the experience with CBA. 

He added the bank will “continue to focus on it and we're very excited about what generative AI can bring to the strategy.” 

Setting strong foundations 

Munroe said, “It's important to enable your organisation to be ready for AI and generative AI.”

According got Munroe, CBA “spent a lot of time building the foundations” to prep the bank as “foundational capability in your organisation is what will differentiate you.”

During the talk, Munroe pointed to the bank's fraud, scam and financial abuse features it has been steadily working on building these features out. 

“We've invested quite a lot of focus and money into introducing AI into those solutions,” he said. 

“We've seen a marked uptick as well. We apply AI to our digital transaction abuse or digital transaction fraud. That's the fraud where you're cards not present and any purchase online or mobile.

“We introduced AI into that space. And within the first year, we saw a 35 percent uptick in our financial digital transaction protection. That's about a $10 million savings in the first year alone,” Munroe said. 

He also said there are AI models behind customer data and transactions to “help you predict your cash flow” and also create a personalised in-app experience. 

Munroe also said late last year the major bank launched its own CommBank Customer Copilot and discussed ambitions to develop an AI "banker" that can offer tailored insights and take verbal commands.

During the talk, Munroe said ethics around AI “cannot be an afterthought”.

“I think it's the responsibility of organisations like CBA and Microsoft to help navigate the ethics of AI and responsible AI. 

“We're very proud to partner with Microsoft and other government organizations in 2019. To help formulate the Australian AI ethics principles and we think those principles are foundational to how we use AI and industry,” he said.