Customers Bank and OpenAI have announced a multiyear collaboration to deploy AI across the US-based lender's commercial banking operations.
The partnership expands a relationship that began in 2023, when Customers Bank first deployed ChatGPT Enterprise. The new agreement moves considerably further, with OpenAI's technical teams engaging directly onsite to build custom AI capabilities drawing on the bank's own processes, data, and institutional knowledge.
Three operational priorities
The collaboration targets three areas: lending, deposits, and payments. In lending, AI is to handle document collection, credit memoranda preparation, legal documents, and post-closing portfolio and collateral monitoring. In deposits, AI will streamline digital onboarding and account setup. In payments, AI will accelerate the capabilities of cubiX, the bank's proprietary payments platform, to deliver agent-ready APIs and AI-driven risk and compliance tooling.
The bank expects to roll out AI agents across these three areas over the next six to 12 months. If the targets are met, closing a commercial loan, including underwriting, document collection, and legal negotiations, would be reduced from 30 to 45 days to approximately seven days. Opening accounts for complex commercial clients, which currently takes more than a day, could be reduced to under 20 minutes using conversational AI and automated document gathering.
The scale of the bank's existing AI adoption is notable. 75% of the bank's team members already use tools powered by OpenAI, and the bank states it has spent the preceding year building operational and governance infrastructure to deploy AI at scale. AI has also been applied to software development.
Financial targets and workforce implications
The bank is targeting an improvement in its efficiency ratio from approximately 49% to the low 40s, with higher returns expected to begin in 2027. The CEO has also indicated that the automation drive could slow hiring, with the bank aiming to generate more revenue per employee rather than expanding headcount at the same rate as operations grow.
Despite the degree of automation, the bank has stated that customer relationships are to remain fully human, with the intent being to free bankers to focus on client structuring and service rather than administrative tasks.
An analyst at Piper Sandler noted that what distinguishes this arrangement is the embedding of OpenAI personnel directly within the bank's operations to develop its AI tools, a step that appears to go beyond how most banks have approached AI deployment to date. The arrangement is also positioned as commercially viable for OpenAI: the custom system built at Customers Bank could subsequently be adapted and sold to other banks.
