CBA smart weather model leads to millions of customer contacts

More than 3.5 million CBA customers predicted to be in the path of natural disasters have been contacted by the bank since the creation of a smart weather data model a year-and-a-half ago.

The model uses custom algorithms to monitor natural disasters and notable weather events in Australia - information that can help the bank to predict who might benefit from offers of same-day financial assistance.

The results of the model initially led to CBA contacting 80,000 customers impacted by the Perth bushfires in March 2021.

A week later the bank used insights from the smart weather model to contact 700,000 customers across NSW and Queensland during torrential rainfall and floods.

CBA’s chief analytics officer Dr Andrew McMullan told iTnews that since the introduction the data model, the bank has “been in contact with more than 3.5 million customers and businesses that may be affected by natural disasters to ensure they are informed about the support available for their individual circumstances."

“This figure will evolve as we continue to closely monitor current events in flood-affected areas across NSW, Victoria and Tasmania,” he added.

Customers are mostly contacted via the customer engagement engine (CEE), which is the system CBA uses to send appropriate messages to customers in its banking apps.

McMullan said that over the past year-and-a-half, improvements to the model and its linkage with the CEE had been made.

This "enables us to update customer communications more frequently as situations unfold," he said.

In addition, the bank had honed its data sources "so we can identify potential impacts much more precisely".

CBA could now “manage multiple natural disaster event types concurrently, like we are doing today with the floods on Australia’s east coast.”

He said the bank is exploring further data sources which would enable it to provide specific updates to customers and businesses on top of its Emergency Assistance Package - “For example, the location of a nearby temporary pop-up branch or ATM, or changes to service times in the area”.