Customers Bank Taps OpenAI to Drive AI Across Commercial Banking
Customers Bank, the digital-forward subsidiary of Customers Bancorp (NYSE: CUBI), has announced a multiyear strategic collaboration with OpenAI to redefine its commercial banking operating model and become one of the first AI-enabled regional banks in the United States.
Under the agreement, OpenAI will work directly with Customers Bank's teams, embedding engineers and providing access to its frontier models. Rather than adopting off-the-shelf AI tools, the bank will use the collaboration to build custom capabilities tailored to its own processes, data and institutional knowledge.
Today, 75% of Customers Bank's team members already use tools powered by OpenAI, building on a relationship that began in 2023 with the bank's adoption of ChatGPT Enterprise.
"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," said Sam Sidhu, President and CEO of Customers Bancorp. "We expect a fundamental re-engineering of how Customers Bank operates. By the end of 2026, our bankers will spend more of their time on the work that creates value for clients and our shareholders."
Three areas of focus
The collaboration targets three core areas of the bank's commercial business:
- Lending - automating document collection, credit memoranda, legal documents and portfolio monitoring.
- Deposits - streamlining digital onboarding and account setup for complex commercial clients.
- Payments - extending capabilities for cubiX, the bank's payments platform, which processes a $2 trillion run-rate.
Customers Bank is targeting completion of the initial phase by the end of 2026.
About Customers Bank
Customers Bancorp holds nearly $26 billion in assets and is one of the 80 largest bank holding companies in the United States. The bank was ranked #1 among midsize banks by American Banker in 2024 and #45 on Forbes' list of the 100 largest publicly traded banks. It reports a Net Promoter Score of 81, against an industry average of 41.
