(17 October 2025 – Australia) Westpac is establishing a formative role for artificial intelligence (AI) at every stage of the business lending process, building on the value the technology has already delivered in areas such as credit decisioning.
Westpac’s scale-up in AI investment follows the lead of fierce business banking rival CommBank and will influence end-to-end lending, customer and banker-led activities.
The bank recently shared a behind-the-scenes look of its partnership with RDC.ai, formerly Rich Data Co, that it inked in 2021. The partnership between RDC.ai, Westpac and Amazon Web Services (AWS) has broadened to cover generative and agentic AI, and more use cases beyond credit decisioning.
AI is influencing the way the bank assesses credit applications from its business customers and successfully functioning to the point that broader use of AI in the business bank can now be implemented with extensive latent and untapped value in the data holdings of the business bank.
“When we look at the tangible outcomes, there are a number of areas I can’t talk about too much because they’re market sensitive. It’s not just about ensuring the right decision is made, but also that the outcome is explainable, which goes a long way to making the regulator comfortable with what we’re doing” Westpac Head of Technology and Business Lending, Dr Martin Anderson commented to iTnews’s Ry Crozier at the AWS financial services symposium in Sydney.
“We predict AI, in its various forms, will have an impact at every single stage of the lending process. We will have to leverage it to get the most out of the technology and to get the best outcome for our customers. Whether it is faster decisions, better decisions, protecting the customers, protecting ourselves from fraud and scams and the like, the usage of AI will be even more ubiquitous than it is now” Dr Anderson added.
“If we can understand the data, we can be transparent about the reasons we approve or decline applications, or we can be transparent with the way we want to treat customers, either by extending credit or helping them manage them through some hardship. Those things will help banks deal with their customers more proactively” stated RDC.ai Cofounder and Chief Market and Strategy Officer, Gordon Campbell.