Commonwealth Bank has incorporated more personalisation and customisation into the latest version of its CommBank app and it is starting to offer some of the same features to business customers. Presenting the changes at a strategy briefing yesterday, CBA chief executive Matt Comyn said: “We want to offer a differentiated proposition and we see more opportunities for that in digital. The frequency and strength of engagement is important because, if we get these enhancements right, there is a compounding advantage.” CBA has 7.7 million app users who log in 9.2 million times a day. Close to 3 million customers use the app’s money management tools. CommBank app 5.0 has a more personalised landing page, reflecting the customer’s activity, whether it be travel planning, home buying or saving. It has an improved search function to get customers to products, services and other features more easily. And it will have a greater facility for customer customisation. CommSec has been integrated into the app. Customers were able to view their CommSec holdings on the app but now they will be able to trade domestic shares and exchange traded funds. Similar personalisation has been added to the business banking app. Users will have a dashboard presenting them with key business information when they log in. CBA chief data and analytics officer Andrew McMullan said the bank has done a lot of work with its artificial intelligence partner H2O.ai to make its business processes more efficient. “McMullan said: “We introduced Benefit Finder in 2019 to help customers identify government rebates and benefits. Many customers have used it, but we wanted it to be more engaging. “At the moment the customer engine looks at the benefits a customer is eligible for and sends a notification. Now the notifications will be tailored to the customer, using different language and images, to encourage more use.” The bank is also using AI in its call centres to make responses to customer queries timelier and more accurate by locating the relevant items in the procedural manual. Comyn said: “Banks are full of policies and procedures. We want to make it easy to serve up answers to customers and staff. AI can be transformational in that work.” McMullan said the bank follows Australia’s AI Ethics Principles, which was developed by government as a guide to business and government in the design and implementation of AI.