- Key insight: Customers Bank is expanding its relationship with OpenAI through a multiyear partnership that will focus on deploying AI in three areas of its commercial banking segment.
- What’s at stake: The regional bank, which has been embracing AI for years, will work with onsite OpenAI engineers to build custom AI capabilities that the bank said could eventually increase revenue.
- Expert quote: “This strategic collaboration with OpenAI gives us the frontier models, engineering expertise and ability to co-create a roadmap toward becoming an AI native bank.” — Customers Bank CEO Sam Sidhu
Customers Bank is partnering with OpenAI to deploy artificial intelligence across its commercial banking business, a move that will position it to be “an AI native bank,” the company announced Monday.
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The multiyear collaboration between the West Reading, Pennsylvania-based regional bank and the creator of ChatGPT will focus on end-to-end workflow management in lending, deposits and payments, Customers said in a press release. The rollout involves placing OpenAI technical teams onsite at Customers to build custom AI capabilities, such as AI-enabled document collection, digital account onboarding, post-closing portfolio and collateral monitoring and AI-driven risk tools.
That includes using AI on its earnings calls. Last Friday, about one-third of the way into the bank’s first-quarter earnings call, Customers CEO Sam Sidhu revealed to analysts that the prepared remarks he had delivered just a few minutes prior were made by his “AI clone.” He said the action “may be a first in the history of public company earnings calls.”
“The execution of this call itself is a live demonstration of what we mean when we say AI is not an experiment at Customers Bank,” Sidhu said. “We will be using it to transform our company.”
The banking arm of the $25.9 billion-asset Customers Bancorp did not provide financial details about its partnership with OpenAI. But it has discussed how extensively it’s using the platform.
Currently, 75% of the bank’s employees use tools powered by OpenAI, according to the Monday press release. On Friday’s earnings call, Sidhu said that more than 500 agents and custom AI models have been built by Customers’ employees, including about two dozen in the past two weeks.
AI-enabled workflows have saved 28,000 hours, equivalent to 15 full-time employees, Sidhu said. The technology could potentially reduce the need to hire people while allowing Customers to realize more revenue per employee, Sidhu told CNBC, which
“This strategic collaboration with OpenAI gives us the frontier models, engineering expertise and ability to co-create a roadmap toward becoming an AI native bank,” Sidhu said in the release.
The use of AI has been a dominant theme on banks’ first-quarter earnings calls. Two weeks ago, Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick said
“This is something we consider to be additive to what we have,” Pick said on the bank’s call.
The partnership between Customers and OpenAI appears to go a step beyond where other banks have gone, Manuel Navas, an analyst at Piper Sandler, said Monday in a research note.
“What differentiates this arrangement is that OpenAI’s personnel will be embedded in [Customers’] operations to improve its AI tools,” Navas wrote. He wrote that Customers will be the first to implement improved AI tools that it is already fully committed to using,” while OpenAI has the opportunity to improve its large language model in a live operating environment.
Looking forward, “OpenAI can then market its tool eventually to other banks,” said Navas. He added that there doesn’t seem to be a drawback, though more details over time are welcome.