The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has launched upgrades to its banking platform with CommBank App 5.0 integrating its CommSec trading app and new AI-driven personalisation.
During a strategy update on Wednesday, CBA chief executive Matt Comyn announced multiple new projects, saying digital technology “is an absolutely critical part of our strategy”.
Part of CommBank v5.0 will see the bank’s trading platform CommSec integrated into the digital banking app, enabling users to invest in Australian shares and exchange traded funds (ETFs).
Comyn said the “CommSec standalone site will remain” but its CommSec Pocket trading platform “over time, we'll actually decommission that and that'll be folded [in] entirely.”
CBA’s executive general manager of digital and customer Meg Bonighton said the CommSec integration into the main CBA app means CommSec customers can trade in roughly four steps rather than having to “toggle between the two apps”.
“We'll move on to international shares as the next thing here, but we'll continue to build out this feature set for our customers to do simple self-directed investing," Bonighton said.
Bonighton added the bank’s customers want the banking app to be more personalised, provide greater ease-of-use and better search functionality.
In response Bonighton said CBA has actioned a number of new feature requests.
“We've now got a huge uplift to the search that we're building into app 5.0," she said.
"What that does is allows you to type in a topic and it'll bring back any particular transaction through your accounts that might relate to that topic."
Alongside search customisation, the app will now “bring forward more relevant content" for customers.
The new app has also upgraded to include a new “simple profile switch”, allowing CBA’s small business customers to easily move between business and personal accounts.
The new version of the app is a result of the bank’s continued focus on simplifying its technology architecture.
Bonighton said the new version of the banking app stems from CBA’s focus on leveraging its technology, AI and its data stacks.
Generative AI capabilities
CBA's chief data and analytics officer Dr Andrew McMullan said the bank has been “using generative AI to provide a step change of personalisation within the app” and using AI plus machine learning “to better protect our customers from fraud and scams”.
He added the bank has created its own internal AI policies and frameworks, which dictate the secure deployment of AI across the organisation, built on the back of government-defined principles.
“Over the last few years, as we've built out our enterprise data platform, that means we've now got access to more data and more information to better understand and serve our customers," McMullan said.
“With the evolution and improvement in AI and science, the ability to be able to leverage that data to do better things for our customers is really very exciting for us.”
McMullan said the bank’s customer engagement engine (CEE), which powers its benefit finder tool, now runs “over 1000 machine learning models in real time over 157 billion data points”.
With the introduction of generative AI, CBA intends to increase levels of personalisation and engagement via "different experiences in the app.”
CommBank Gen.ai studio
McMullan said through its partnership with Silicon Valley-based H2O.ai, the bank has developed a new generative AI solution, CommBank Gen.ai studio
“Partnering with H2O.ai, we've been able to leverage 49 of the best large language models (LLMs) that exist globally today," he said.
This offered "a safe and secure way" to experiment with LLMs "to improve the service experience for our customers."
"Our partners H2O have actually gone on-record to say that they believe this is the first example in financial services globally of a ground-up, in-built generative AI studio," McMullan said.
The bank also launched new range of merchant and deposit products including Smart Mini which completes the rollout of CBA’s fleet of smart payment terminal devices.
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