CommBank has taken a monumental step forward in its AI transformation journey by activating its state-of-the-art AI Factory in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This pioneering initiative is poised to accelerate the adoption of Generative AI (Gen AI) across the bank, bolstering its position as a leader in AI innovation.
The AI Factory will enable employees to conduct safe testing and development of AI solutions by providing the compute power required to fine-tune and train AI large language models (LLMs) at increased speeds. This will allow CommBank to provide hyper-personalised and contextualised experiences for customers and communities, more quickly and at scale.
The AI Factory will use cutting-edge capabilities from AWS including , a machine learning (ML) managed service, and for deep learning and high performance computing applications. CommBank is the first local AWS customer to leverage this service in the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) region, marking a significant milestone in the bank’s commitment to leverage AI and machine learning for enhanced customer experiences and operational efficiency.
CommBank’s Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Dr Andrew McMullan, said: “The collaboration with AWS marks a significant milestone in our commitment to driving digital innovation to deliver better customer outcomes and experiences, more quickly. By leveraging AWS’s cloud infrastructure and latest AI capabilities, the AI Factory is set to accelerate the bank’s development time for AI-powered initiatives by around four times compared to our current rate.
“It will empower our engineers and AI scientists to embed AI and Gen AI capabilities in their day-to-day activities enabling increased creativity and output. With this new compute capability, we are unlocking CommBank to deliver more personalised experiences for all our customers, reducing our time to deliver across all our channels and operations, while supporting the responsible growth of Gen AI across the bank.”
Jamie Simon, Director of Financial Services at AWS Australia and New Zealand, added: “AWS has a long-standing relationship with CommBank, and the AI Factory is the latest example of our collaborative efforts to leverage AI, ML, and generative AI across the bank, to more rapidly identify customer insights that can be used to tailor more personalised experiences, streamline and improve customer interactions, and increase operational efficiency, creating a competitive edge. We’re thrilled CommBank is the first Aussie customer to benefit from this service in our AWS Sydney region. We look forward to helping CommBank safely iterate at a faster pace and bring new features and services to their customers.”
Dr McMullan went on to explain that the AI Factory will enable the bank to leverage this constantly evolving technology now and into the future.
“AI has been a strategic focus for CommBank for a number of years, with recent advances in Gen AI promising significant uplifts to improving customer experience and simplifying core banking operational processes. The technology is advancing quickly, and we need the right infrastructure in place to support our strategic goal of building tomorrow’s bank today for the benefit of our customers. The AI Factory will ensure that we are properly set-up to leverage this emerging technology effectively. We find that when AI-powered experiences drive demonstrably better outcomes for customers, this builds trust, confidence, and ultimately engagement – and the more our customers engage with us, the better we can anticipate their needs.
“As a leader in AI innovation, this initiative is not just about advancing technology. It’s about shaping the future of banking, not only for our customers and our people, but for Australia more broadly. Harnessing the power of AI and cloud to fuel economic growth, drive innovation, and create opportunities for all Australians, is one way we are building a brighter future for all,” concluded Dr McMullan.
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