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AI Cuts Scam Losses, Speeds Up Home Loans at Top Australia Bank

The AI rollout at Australia’s largest bank has further to run as uses develop from urgent problems to wider organizational profitability. Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg (Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Commonwealth Bank of Australia said generative artificial intelligence tools cut customer losses from scams in half. It has also helped to shorten the process for mortgage pre-approvals to as little as 10 minutes.

The technology helped lower frauds by 30% and its AI messaging app trimmed call center customer wait times by 40% this year, the bank said in a statement Thursday. AI may also soon be able to answer some 10% of the trickiest customer inquiries that regular computing responses can’t currently handle, the lender said.

The AI rollout at Australia’s largest bank has further to run as uses develop from urgent problems to wider organizational profitability, Comyn said. Scams and frauds were already falling in Australia as banks and technology firms fought back to discourage criminals.  

“There’d be more than 50 use cases we’ve already developed and delivered that we’re not showing today,” Chief Executive Officer Matt Comyn said in Sydney on Thursday. “We’ve spent a lot of this year trying to think about what are the handful of really important use cases.”

Commonwealth Bank will also use the technology to pre-populate documents for existing customers. This can trim conditional approval wait times for housing loans to as little as 10 minutes and small business annual reviews from 14 hours to two, it said.

The improved technology also sifts through the 20-million-plus payments Commonwealth Bank handles each day in order to issue about 20,000 suspicious warning alerts daily — a figure it sees soon reaching 35,000.

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