B&TB&TB&T
  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Technology
  • Regulars
    • Agency Scorecards
    • Best of the Best
    • Campaigns of the Month
    • CMO Power List
    • CMOs to Watch
    • Culture Bites
    • Fast 10
    • New Business Winners
    • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • Jobs
  • Awards
    • 30 Under 30
    • B&T Awards
    • Cairns Crocodiles
    • Women In Media
    • Women Leading Tech
Search
Trending topics:
  • Cairns Crocodiles
  • Nine
  • Seven
  • Cannes Lions
  • State of Origin
  • NRL
  • WPP
  • Pinterest
  • Thinkerbell
  • B&T Women in Media
  • imaa
  • AFL
  • Anthony Albanese
  • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • AI
  • Meta
  • Foxtel
  • TV Ratings
  • Radio Ratings
  • Sports Marketing

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.
Reading: Artificial Intelligence Is Like Letting 17-Year-Olds Loose On Your Business: Westpac CIO
Share
B&TB&T
Subscribe
Search
  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Technology
  • Regulars
    • Agency Scorecards
    • Best of the Best
    • Campaigns of the Month
    • CMO Power List
    • CMOs to Watch
    • Culture Bites
    • Fast 10
    • New Business Winners
    • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • Jobs
  • Awards
    • 30 Under 30
    • B&T Awards
    • Cairns Crocodiles
    • Women In Media
    • Women Leading Tech
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.
B&T > Media > Artificial Intelligence Is Like Letting 17-Year-Olds Loose On Your Business: Westpac CIO
Media

Artificial Intelligence Is Like Letting 17-Year-Olds Loose On Your Business: Westpac CIO

David Hovenden
Published on: 3rd May 2018 at 12:44 PM
David Hovenden
Share
3 Min Read
SHARE

Westpac CIO Dave Curran has described artificial intelligence as the next biggest challenge in banking while speaking in Sydney this week at Oracle World.

He said people still think of artificial intelligence as a new technology whereas he says AI is not just a new technology; it’s a capability that has to learn.

“The analogy I use when talking to my senior colleagues within the bank is: it’s like hiring a 17-year-old, a really smart 17-year-old, but still a 17-year-old. You are not going to let them loose on day one. You have to spend a number of years building them and building their skills,” Curran told the audience watching the main stage at Oracle World.

Curran said the big challenge for the business is: how do you hire 17-year-olds and give them time to learn?

“Rather than what we normally do is wait for the technology to be suitably advanced and then we can hire someone who has already learnt. You actually have to start that work now.

“So we’ve got 15 or 16 different initiatives across the bank where we have to put those 17-year-olds to work on top of the data.”

Curran said the AI projects become richer in capability as they learn, but also as the bank brings more of its infrastructure platform online as services with APIs and other things, all of which are housed with Oracle’s cloud platform, the AI programmes are able to link seemingly disparate sets of information.

“Where those two things come together I think that’s where we’re going to see a break through in how we serve our customers in terms of better serving our customers.

“It’s really important that doesn’t necessarily mean how do you sell more to your customers, it’s about how you can better serve your customers and then your customers can make the choice from there,” Curran added.

He also said the banking landscape in relation to disruptor technologies has changed radically in the past five years. Fin-techs and banks used to be at loggerheads, but that’s not the relationship anymore.

“Fin-tech startups can do things quickly banks just can’t do, but by the same token, banks can do things fintechs can’t do as well. We can then work with them to provide a better service to our customers.

“Fin-techs don’t have the business logic we do. They don’t have the capability to handle the regulations. To handle the compliance, to handle the large-scale data and business logic we do. That coming together is a massive change in service to customers as opposed to one is going to take over the other or vice versa, which I think was the conversation of only five years ago.”

Join more than 30,000 advertising industry experts
Get all the latest advertising and media news direct to your inbox from B&T.

No related posts.

TAGGED: AI, artificial intelligence, Oracle, Westpac
Share
David Hovenden
By David Hovenden
Follow:
David Hovenden is one of the co-founders of The Misfits Media Company and is B&T's editor-in-chief. He has been writing about advertising, marketing and media for more than 15 years. At the same time, he has also written for B&T's sister publication Travel Weekly on all matters travel related. Through this publication he can claim to have stepped foot on every continent in the world (now claimed to be eight, if you accept NZ is its own continent). He has also covered the business of law when he was editor-in-chief and publisher of Lawyer Weekly. Human Resources when he worked for that eponymously named title and a plethora of business and technology publications including, but not limited to PC Week, Australian Personal Computer, Web Week, Internet World, Factory Equipment News, Architecture Today and Building Product News. In his spare time David enjoys fishing, kayaking, fine dining and spending time with his family.

Latest News

Melissa Fein Unpacks Impostor Syndrome & Modern Career Challenges
14/07/2025
TV Ratings (13/07/2025): All Eyes On Japan As Travel Guides Welcome New Addition
14/07/2025
Former News Corp Execs Dale Foenander & Matt Paine Launch Lamington Digital
14/07/2025
Woolies Appoints Interim CMO As Andrew Hicks Makes The Move To M&S In The UK
14/07/2025
//

B&T is Australia’s leading news publication magazine for the advertising, marketing, media and PR industries.

 

B&T is owned by parent company The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.

About B&T

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise

Top Categories

  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • TV Ratings

Sign Up for Our Newsletter



B&TB&T
Follow US
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Register Lost your password?