More than seven percent of ANZ Banking Group’s code was written by artificial intelligence in the last six months, according to CEO Shayne Elliott.
Shayne Elliott (ANZ)
Speaking at ANZ’s full-year results for 2024, Elliott told investors that the bank now has 7000 engineers developing and enhancing its software stack for its digital retail bank ANZ Plus and its mid-to-enterprise corporate offering ANZ Transactive – Global.
Elliott said the bank had spent $2.5 billion on platforms and tools over the past five years, including the technology stacks for ANZ Plus and Transactive-Global.
ANZ was an early adopter of pair programming tool GitHub Copilot and “formally sanctioned” a team to explore generative AI in May 2023.
“More than seven percent of the code written at ANZ in the last six months was written by AI,” Elliott told investors during a live webcast. That number is expected to increase.
“Unlike peers, who will continue struggling with multiple legacy, high-cost and ponderous platforms, our ambition is to have the simplest contemporary platform powered by the best of partners, like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Adobe, AWS and Zafin,” Elliott added.
Elliott said that the bank is developing AI prototypes with an unnamed AI “partner in Palo Alto, [California]” in order to embed generative AI in its digital offering, ANZ Plus.
The moves form part of ANZ’s long-term strategy of technology simplification through ongoing migration of applications to the cloud, software vendor consolidation, automation of engineering processes and lower network costs, as shown in its half-year results in May.
A significant part of this is ANZ’s move to a “dual platform future”, whereby it will move customers to the digital platforms – ANZ Plus and Transactive – and decommission legacy systems.
All retail customers, including those of the recently acquired Suncorp, are expected to be migrated to ANZ Plus by 2028.
A “scaled” migration of customers is expected to begin in the next six-to-nine months.
Mid-to-enterprise customers are expected to be moved onto the Transactive platform by 2026, with ANZ expecting significant platform decommissioning, including Suncorp’s, over the next year.
AI, meanwhile, “will fundamentally change the way” ANZ operates, serves customers, and competes, in the same way as the web, mobile and cloud revolutions, Elliott said.
“In our view, the impact will be more profound,” he said. “It will drive a step change in productivity but more importantly can drive competitive advantage.”
However, he cautioned that “competitive advantage” would only derive from embedding “AI and intelligent automation into… propositions and into critical operations”.
“That’s only possible for the few who have invested in the contemporary technology and data platforms required,” he said. “You can’t build a skyscraper out of sand, and you can’t build it overnight.”
For FY24, ANZ posted a net profit after tax of $6.3 billion.