The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is delivering IT support services through a newly developed generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) assistance tool, able to respond within seconds to in-house ICT issues encountered by staff.
Limited details of the in-house developed IT ‘support desk’ function, dubbed ‘ChatIT’, were disclosed in the bank’s 2024 Full Year report released today.
More than 10,000 employees have made use of the IT support chatbot, CBA wrote, with the function boasting an average response time of 14 seconds. Staff have so far rated the tool “positively”, the bank said.
ChatIT is one of more than 60 GenAI tools currently in use by CBA – up from the 50 use cases disclosed in the bank’s half-year report in February.
These use cases are being generated and tested out of CBA’s Gen.ai Studio, a partnership with open-source GenAI and machine learning platform developer H2O.ai, which provides a “controlled environment” for the bank to safely experiment with large language models (LLMs).
The bank has also revealed the deployment of a real-time complaint identification system, used to identify and differentiate complaints from feedback, to help expedite the complaints resolution process.
A complementary AI tool is also being used by CBA’s customer support team to generate complaint acknowledgement letters for customers. According to the bank, the tool has delivered a 100-fold reduction in the time required to prepare complaint acknowledgement letters – from 20 minutes to 13 seconds.
“These efficiencies allow us to enhance our focus on solving complaints and providing better outcomes for customers,” CBA wrote.
AI has been elevated to a board-level concern for the bank, with the report noting the CBA board’s efforts to “[build] a greater understanding of artificial intelligence, including the bank’s approach to risk, governance and opportunities, particularly in the context of generative AI”.
CBA reported a net profit after tax of $9.8 billion at the end of FY2024, down two per cent from its FY2023 results, and four per cent on the half.
IT services expenses rose by 9 per cent, or $189 million, to more than $2.2 billion year-over-year (up $13 million or 1% to $1.1 billion over the half), driven, CBA said, by higher amortisation, increased software licensing costs and growth in cloud computing volumes, which have been partly offset by productivity gains, including less use of third party contractors.
CBA’s investment spend also rose 1 per cent to $2 billion, with CBA banking on its expansion of AI and ML to help drive an uplift in productivity and customer service.
