Customers Bank Taps OpenAI to Reengineer Commercial Banking Operations

Pennsylvania-headquartered Customers Bank plans to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) across its commercial banking operations in a new multiyear strategic collaboration with OpenAI.

Aiming to become “one of the first AI-enabled regional banks in the United States,” Customers Bank will leverage OpenAI’s advanced models to reimagine its lending, deposit and payment lifecycles, it said in a Monday (April 27) press release.

This will build upon a relationship that begin in 2023 when Customers Bank deployed ChatGTP Enterprise. Now, the collaboration will include direct onsite engagement with OpenAI’s technical teams and resources, with the companies working together to build custom AI capabilities on the Customers Bank’s own processes, data and institutional knowledge, according to the release.

The companies will start with three areas in which they see the greatest opportunity: lending, with AI handling document collection, credit memoranda preparation, legal documents, post-closing portfolio and collateral monitoring and similar tasks; deposits, where AI will streamline digital onboarding and account setup; and payments, where AI will accelerate the capabilities of Customers Bank’s proprietary payments platform, cubiX.

Customers Bancorp President and CEO Sam Sidhu said in the release that Customers Bank has spent the last year building the operational and governance infrastructure to deploy AI at scale, has 75% of its team members using tools powered by OpenAI, and now expects “a fundamental re-engineering” of how the bank operates.

“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. “This strategic engagement positions us to be the leader in AI adoption among regional banks. By the end of 2026, our bankers will spend more of their time on the work that creates value for clients and our shareholders.”

OpenAI said in March that its enterprise business now makes up more than 40% of its revenue and is set to reach parity with its consumer business by the end of the year.

In February, OpenAI said it now offers both a platform and the services of human engineers to help enterprises use AI agents. The platform, Frontier, helps enterprises build, deploy and manage AI agents.