Macquarie Bank is looking to AI to reduce the “cognitive load” on customers when it comes to managing their financial affairs, with “more than 30” AI-augmented products and services in the works for 2025. Luis Uguina. Chief digital officer Luis Uguina told the Google Cloud Next 25 conference that the bank had set itself up for the current AI era courtesy of a decision “to move all the digital workloads and our customer data into Google Cloud” in 2020. “In 2025, 97 percent of our workloads and all the customer data are running on public cloud and already in 2025 we are going to deliver more than 30 different products and services that have some kind of AI capabilities embedded,” Uguina said. Uguina used much of his talk to highlight the customer lens that Macquarie is applying to its AI work. While noting a tendency for AI to be used to increase efficiency and reduce cost, Uguina suggested the technology's real potential is “to drive revenue [and] to have more customers happier and using your systems more and more often.” Uguina said that industries such as finance, utilities and insurance had improved at presenting customers with “insights” rather than raw data in recent years. “[By presenting them] with insights, basically what we are doing is reducing cognitive load and the amount of time that the customer needs to spend understanding what's happening in the system,” he said. Going a step further, Uguina saw the potential for AI to handle intensive or repetitive financial management tasks on a customer’s behalf, such as paying bills. He added that “the nirvana of delivering services to the customer is moving into the world of ‘autopiloting’.” “At some point, every single company should be able to use the customer data, the customer behaviours and the information that we have from the customer in order to really drive the business in ‘autopilot’,” Uguina said. “This is the highest level that you can achieve in terms of efficiency and revenue. You will have millions of customers that will love to use your company, that will love to use your product because basically, you are not putting the cognitive load on them. “You are putting all the load, all the capacity in your company and you will be able to deliver an amazing product. “We strongly believe that this is the last frontier in terms of using AI to deliver and delight the customer.” Ry Crozier attended Google Cloud Next 25 in Las Vegas as a guest of Google Cloud.