CBA feels the heat on app quality
Commonwealth Bank will upgrade to a more personalised banking app, as it seeks to maintain a leading position in digital banking.The bank is trialling the latest version of its app and hopes to offer it to customers in two or three months.CBA chief executive Matt Comyn said customers would be able to set the "look and feel" of the app. It will allow users to determine which items appear on the screen, so it is more relevant to their banking needs.Comyn said: "That could be how your spending compares with last month. It might be reminding you about when your credit card payment is coming up. It could be telling you to take action because you have overdrawn your account."It could be helping you pick up where you left off with an application," he said.CBA has 6.7 million active digital customers. The bank's mobile app gets five million log-ins a day.Comyn said this customisation was enabled by some serious technology: 200 advanced machine learning models analysing 157 billion data points in real time."One of the other features we have added is trying to help customers identify and receive benefits they are entitled to. This can be as simple as a pensioner who does not know they are entitled to a benefit," he said.Comyn said the bank had 270 initiatives planned around linking customers to benefits. The bank has been working with Harvard University over the past couple of years on a range of behavioural experiments. One project, involving credit cards, is designed to improve customer behaviour around the timing of income payments and billing.