Bank launches AI contact centre to speed answers and fight fraud
Westpac New Zealand is leaning into artificial intelligence to improve how frontline staff deal with customers, in a move that could reshape service expectations across the banking and mortgage market.
The bank has begun rolling out Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS), becoming the first major New Zealand company – and one of the first banks globally – to deploy the platform. When a customer calls, the system will surface their relevant banking profile and product information in real time, supporting Westpac’s New Zealand-based contact centre team.
Russell Jones (pictured), Westpac NZ chief information officer, said the launch marked a major milestone.
“We’re really excited to be the first bank in New Zealand, as well as one of the first in the world, to introduce CCaaS,” Jones said in a media release.
The bank expects to deploy the system across all contact centres by August, completing configuration, testing, and rollout in under a year.
Kiwis warming to AI in banking
Westpac commissioned research alongside the launch to test how comfortable customers are with AI in their banking lives. In a nationally representative survey of 529 people, 66% said they were already using AI tools in some form, with 53% using AI personally and 30% at work.
Crucially for advisers, attitudes towards banks using AI were more positive than many might assume.
Around 70% of respondents were comfortable or neutral about the idea of AI being used to detect and prevent fraud, while 65% felt the same about AI helping contact centre staff provide quicker responses. That suggests most customers will accept AI-assisted interactions as long as a human banker remains in the loop.
Jones stressed that the aim is to back people, not replace them.
“Our people are our greatest competitive advantage – we want to use AI to support them to be their best,” he said, noting that complex customers can hold “a whole range of products, all with different terms and conditions”.
CCaaS will pull accurate, relevant information “almost instantaneously”, pushing extra product details to staff as topics come up in conversation.
That emphasis on using AI to make frontline roles easier and more effective echoes Microsoft’s wider research, which finds many employees who already use AI report higher productivity and job satisfaction and want their organisations to move faster in adopting AI tools.
AI speeds broker help while tightening fraud safeguards
For mortgage advisers, the new platform could mean shorter wait times when clarifying credit policy, product features, or documentation requirements, and quicker escalation when clients run into issues with payments or fraud. Stronger fraud-detection capabilities may also lead to more rigorous verification processes for applications and refinances.
Jones said the CCaaS rollout is part of a wider technology overhaul that has seen Westpac refresh networks, platforms, and data centres. He emphasised that “security and privacy are obviously critical”, with customer data remaining secure and confidential as the bank modernises how it serves borrowers and depositors.
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