Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is deepening its existing partnership with Microsoft after signing a new ‘letter of intent’ to drive wider adoption of generative AI (Gen AI) and ongoing cyber security initiatives. 

As part of the agreement, CVBA is developing a CommBank Copilot to resolve customer queries faster.

Gavin Munroe, CBA’s Group Executive, Technology and Group Chief Information Officer, said engineers from Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters had already started working with CBA on a set of experiments with real life use cases to improve our customers’ experience. 

“Working in partnership with Microsoft, alongside other external partners, gives us the opportunity to access the global expertise in a range of areas so we can deliver more for our customers – including the incredibly fast-moving area of generative AI,” said Mr Munroe.

“Through our ongoing partnership, we’ll be able to deliver technology that will allow customers to interact with CBA seamlessly and resolve queries faster than ever before.

“We also see this as an opportunity to work together with leading global technology teams to ensure CBA’s safety and security is constantly upgraded and improved, to keep pace with the evolving threat landscape.”

CBA is also using the new generative AI–powered Copilot for Microsoft 365 to simplify internal operations and innovate.

Three hundred of the bank’s staff have had early access to the technology since late 2023 and been using it for tasks like accelerating market research and summarising text.