Sam Sidhu, CEO of Grahak Bank.
Courtesy: Customer Bank
The conference call with analysts Friday to discuss first-quarter results took about half an hour. customer bank ceo Sam Sidhu Something unusual was revealed – up to that point, he wasn’t actually speaking.
“The prepared comments you heard from me today were delivered by my AI clone, not read by me,” Sidhu said in what is likely a first for a public company earnings call.
The purpose of the stunt, he said, was to highlight a broader change customer bankThe $25.9 billion asset lender, which serves startups and small businesses, embraces artificial intelligence.
customer bank A multiyear partnership has been signed with OpenAI that will see the AI giant add engineers to the company to help automate lending and client onboarding, CNBC has exclusively learned.
The deal is part of Sidhu’s effort to get ahead of other banks in the industry’s race to transform itself by using AI agents as the new digital workforce. Their strategy depends on automating core banking processes – for example, reducing loan timelines from weeks to days – and driving growth without involving staff at the same pace.
While many bankers have described AI in broad terms such as productivity gains, Sidhu is linking it directly to financial goals.
Sidhu told CNBC that the project will increase the firm’s efficiency ratio from about 49 to the low 40s, which will boost the bank’s returns from next year.
According to the bank’s CEO, the relationship with OpenAI – which has targeted finance as one of its core industries – will be a symbiotic one for the AI giant.
“We’re going to co-create enterprise solutions that they can potentially sell to other banks in the future,” Sidhu said. “The goal here is to have an end-to-end, automated agent-led workflow” for lending, deposits and payments.
OpenAI said it is proud to help Customers Bank “as they create a more intelligent operating model that empowers employees, strengthens customer service, and sets a new standard for regional banking,” said Chief Revenue Officer dennis dresser said in a statement provided to CNBC.
always active worker
The bank expects to incorporate AI agents into loans, deposits and payments in the next six to 12 months.
If they are successful, closing a commercial loan will take 30 to 45 days, including underwriting, document collection and legal negotiations, which will amount to about seven days, Sidhu said.
He said opening accounts for complex commercial customers may take more than a day, but using conversational AI and automated document aggregation it will be finished in less than 20 minutes.
“When you have an autonomous agent, you’re essentially creating a digital worker… and they can work around the clock,” Sidhu said.
The client bank has been laying the groundwork for this announcement for years, first touting OpenAI in 2023 as Sidhu had what he described as a small investment in the AI giant through his contacts in the venture capital world. He said the OpenAI deal signed last week broadens their relationship, enabling AI engineers to power the bank’s processes.
is one of the banks A handful of smaller lenders that target the startup and venture capital community and its reportedly said to Silicon Valley Bank in 2023 amid the regional banking crisis that year.
main benefits
While it is a relatively small firm compared to other companies JPMorgan ChaseAccording to Sidhu, who is starting his career with a bank that has assets worth $4.9 trillion, Customers Bank has a significant advantage. Goldman Sachs in 2004. Megabanks have broader global operations and far greater complexity and regulatory standards for AI implementation, he said.
“Smaller banks will not be expected to have the same level of framework as many of the larger banks,” he said. Regulators want community and regional banks “to be able to compete with the big banks.”
He said the lender already uses AI to write half of the firm’s software code and has saved 28,000 hours of work so far, the equivalent of not hiring about 15 full-time employees.
“This is an opportunity for us to potentially slow down hiring and generate more revenue per employee,” he said.
The bank is also looking to enter new businesses that would be too costly to handle with AI agents. For these AI-native business lines, he said, small teams oversee automated systems that handle work that previously required large numbers of humans.
Unlike typical software licensing agreements, Sidhu said, with both parties contributing resources to build new tools together, OpenAI is achieving real-world use cases inside a regulated financial institution.
“This is going to benefit our investors. This is going to benefit our customers,” Sidhu said. “Hopefully our regulators will also be pleased over time, as they see us reducing risk as well.”
