“Australians are telling us they want more control, clarity and confidence in managing their money. With over 9 million customers using the CommBank app every day, we are continuing to innovate and improve their experience,” said Angus Sullivan, group executive of retail banking services.

“CommBank Companion is our response – bringing together live spending and saving data into a single experience, so customers can be better informed and manage their money, and act with confidence.

Currently, the technology is being tested with a select group of business banking customers, as well as employees. Before the AI is rolled out to customers more broadly, the AI will be tested on a range of criteria.

“It reflects a broader shift in banking – from something customers navigate, to something that can actively surface relevant information to them. In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the employee and business bank test to include some personal banking customers ahead of a broader rollout.

“Trust is critical in banking. That’s why we’re taking a deliberate and staged approach to CommBank Companion, with strong governance, testing and customer safeguards embedded from day one,” Sullivan said.

Questions customers may ask include:

• “How much does this property cost, and could I afford the repayments with my current spending if I paid a 20 per cent deposit? How does my spending today affect my goal of buying a home?”

• “What subscriptions am I paying for, and what is the most expensive?”

• “Help me plan a budget for my upcoming holiday.”

In the future, it will also be able to answer questions about business affordability regarding expansion and hiring, compare spending to other businesses and point out busiest periods.

“Running a business means making dozens of decisions every day while managing staff, suppliers, customers and cash flow,” said Mike Vacy-Lyle, group executive of business banking.

“CommBank Companion is designed to bring clarity to some of that complexity – summarising what’s happening in the finance of the business in plain language. As the experience is refined, it will highlight when attention may be needed to help business owners sense‑check financial decisions before they act.

“We’re designing it to be a trusted service provider for businesses, extending our relationship banking model and giving more customers access to timely information and support whenever they need it.”

CBA said security is at the core of its new companion, supported by the bank’s $1 billion security investment. It also said testing and governance processes ensure customer safety, consistency and accuracy, adding that all decisions remain in the hands of customers. It also said it was developed with human oversight, but did not say whether or not AI was used in its development.

CBA’s new companion comes as OpenAI partnered with Plaid to let users link their bank accounts to ChatGPT so the chatbot can provide financial advice.

However, just prior, Plaid finally revealed a cyber incident that occurred almost two years earlier.

The incident, which occurred in December 2024, was only recently discovered in April 2026. The disclosure on the Maine Attorney General’s website found that the incident impacted 294 people, with the only description of the breach being “inadvertent disclosure”.

In a letter to those impacted, Plaid said it conducted an investigation, which determined that the incident was not a cyber attack, but an internal technical issue related to phone number recycling.

“The company conducted a thorough investigation and determined the issue stemmed from a phone carrier practice called number ‘recycling’ – when a mobile carrier reassigns a disconnected phone number to a new person. The investigation identified that, in rare cases, this may have resulted in a mismatch of some Plaid accounts tied to those phone numbers,” the notice said.