As artificial intelligence reshapes the banking sector, NAB is expanding its AI capabilities while strengthening its defences against emerging cyber threats through a new integrated operations centre.
The bank has introduced a conversational AI tool from Databricks called Genie, which allows employees to analyse data using simple natural language questions. The tool converts plain-English queries into governed SQL searches and delivers auditable answers within seconds.
Early adoption has helped save between 2 and 4 days of development time per use case, with further productivity gains expected as usage increases.
By combining AI with advanced analytics, NAB can bring together customer details, transactions and service interactions to improve customer experiences. According to NAB executive for data and analytics Jessica Cuthbertson, transaction disputes are one example where this approach has delivered better outcomes.
“It means we can keep customers proactively informed at each stage – whether we need more information, the case is under review, or it has been resolved. This reduces uncertainty for customers and that’s important,” she says. “We can see the difference it makes – customers who are proactively informed throughout the process are 30% less likely to call to get information or for peace of mind.”
At the same time, the bank has launched NAB Nexus, a 24/7 operations hub that brings together teams from technology, cyber security, fraud, payments and physical security to tackle AI-enabled threats.
NAB Group CEO Andrew Irvine said, “AI is going to do a lot of great things for how we live and how we work, but at the same time, AI is also going to help criminals and their threats much faster than when it was a human-only environment.”
Chief Security Officer Sandro Bucchianeri added, “These threats don’t sit neatly in one box. A scam attempt, fraud event, cyber incident or payments issue can quickly intersect. At the same time, new technologies like AI are lowering the barrier for criminals to operate at scale.”
Australia recorded scam losses of $2.18 billion in 2025, while the Australian Signals Directorate received more than 847,000 cybercrime reports in FY2024-25. NAB invested over $900 million in FY25 to strengthen fraud, cyber and financial crime protections.
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