Customers Bank Partners with OpenAI to Automate Core Lending Operations

Customers Bank is aggressively pivoting toward an AI-driven operating model, a shift highlighted during a recent earnings call where CEO Sam Sidhu used an AI clone to deliver his prepared remarks. The stunt served as a prelude to the announcement of a multiyear partnership with OpenAI, designed to transform the bank's internal workflows. Under the agreement, OpenAI will embed engineers directly within the bank to help automate critical processes, including client onboarding and lending. The bank, which manages $25.9 billion in assets and caters primarily to startups and small businesses, aims to scale growth without a proportional increase in headcount. Sidhu has tied this technological shift to specific financial targets, stating that the project is expected to improve the firm's efficiency ratio from approximately 49% to the low 40s, with returns expected to boost starting next year. The bank intends to roll out these AI agents across lending, deposits, and payments over the next 6 to 12 months. Operational gains are expected to be substantial. The bank projects that closing a commercial loan—including underwriting and legal negotiations—will drop from a 30-to-45-day window to just seven days. Furthermore, opening accounts for complex commercial clients is expected to be compressed from over a day to under 20 minutes. Sidhu argues that smaller regional lenders possess a competitive advantage over megabanks like JPMorgan Chase due to lower operational complexity and more flexible regulatory frameworks for AI implementation. The bank has already integrated AI into its development cycle, using the technology to write half of its software code, which has reportedly saved 28,000 labor hours to date.