Turning intent into impact: How AI is powering scalable financial wellness.
09-24-2025
AI is becoming a powerful enabler of financial wellness when applied with the right intent. It’s not a replacement for strategy, human insight or regulatory responsibility. However, with strong leadership, the right data foundations and a culture of experimentation, it can unlock scale, relevance, and ultimately, customer confidence and trust.
Unlocking financial wellness.
Improving customers’ financial wellness is a priority for financial services brands, and for good reason. Adobe’s latest research found that wellness programs enable better customer experiences, from encouraging good financial habits to seamless support.
The research also found common challenges to delivering wellness programs, including:
- difficulty scaling personalisation efforts
- fragmented data and legacy infrastructure
- lack of cross-functional alignment
- stringent regulatory environments
- unclear or unproven return on investment.
Meeting the moment: Financial wellness in focus.
Australian Retirement Trust’s (ART's) Chief Member Experience Officer, Simonne Burnett, and CommBank’s General Manager of Customer Engagement, Matthew Malady, joined a panel discussion on what it takes to evolve financial wellness programs and where AI fits in.
For both leaders, the mission was clear: boost customer confidence, deliver personalised support at scale and make every interaction count. AI isn’t a magic wand, but it’s fast becoming essential to meeting those goals in a scalable, sustainable way.
For ART, confidence is everything.
Burnett explained that ART’s approach to financial wellness is simple. “It’s about helping members feel confident they’ll have enough money to live the life they want – now and in the future,” she said.
With 2.4 million members and over A$345 billion in retirement savings under management, that’s no small task. The gold standard for ART is proactively guiding and engaging its members at every touchpoint, through every step of their lives.
That’s where AI is starting to make a difference. From closed-loop systems that generate regulated content like disclosure documents, to predictive analytics and AI-powered media buying, ART is investing in tools that can personalise with precision to predict and meet members’ needs.
Burnett emphasised the importance of thoughtful experimentation in a tightly regulated sector.
“If you are clear on the problems and opportunities, AI simply becomes a way to accelerate progress. It’s about the outcomes we need to deliver – and AI is high on the list of the tools we test to reach them, supported by guardrails and controls.”
Simonne Burnett
Chief Member Experience Officer, Australian Retirement Trust
For CommBank, it’s both personal and proactive.
At CommBank, financial wellness is broad and deeply integrated into the customer experience. It’s about getting the right products at the right time, building trust and driving engagement, especially through the bank’s CommBank Yello customer recognition program.
“CommBank Yello now has over eight million members. It’s an engagement engine that could incentivise things like using multi-factor authentication and improving financial habits,” said Malady. “But it has customer at its core.”
When it comes to AI experimentation, CommBank takes a decentralised approach, with all staff encouraged to experiment with AI tools to improve customer experience. As Malady put it, “We don’t have to try it on everyone. We take the scientific approach and have lots of beakers on the go.”
He said it’s about lowering the cost and friction of trying new things, while staying closely aligned to customer needs and behaviours. It’s also about acknowledging that customer needs aren’t linear.
“You have to be able to execute in the moment in a really impactful way,” Malady said. “You need to take customers from A to B incredibly quickly. Recognising the opportunity that increased velocity unlocks – the sort of innovation and ability to respond – that’s a space that we are continuing to invest in.”
Organisational enablers.
Both leaders agreed that success with AI starts at the top.
“Our CEO has talked about the role AI is playing in delivering superior customer experiences to more customers at a faster rate,” said Malady. “That creates an environment that encourages teams to try new things responsibly.”
Burnett echoed the importance of vision and alignment. “Again, you’ve got to align around the right business problems, not just the tools. That gives you the clarity and control to explore AI in a way that’s smart, strategic and safe.
“However, it’s certainly not just a top-down approach – our team’s enthusiasm and forward-thinking approach are driving our commitment to exploring and adopting AI,” Burnett added. “By empowering our people to learn more and apply AI responsibly, we’re setting the stage for smarter, faster, more innovative solutions for our customers, and a more engaged team.”
Cross-functional integration is another critical factor. Making financial wellness work at scale requires collaboration across teams.
“There’s no lack of intent from teams across CommBank,” said Malady. “We’ll do some things centrally, but ultimately, if I can unlock the skills that already exist within the organisation and test some of their ideas at a very low cost using AI, then that’s a great result for our customers.”
Human where it matters, automated where it counts.
Delivering financial wellness at scale means knowing when to step back and when to step in.
Both ART and CommBank are focused on building experiences that are simple and seamless for the basics, but high-touch and human-led for the moments that matter most.
Whether it’s personalised suggestions, behavioural nudges or enhanced security features, the goal is to meet customers in their world – and earn their trust every step of the way.
“It’s about simplifying the interface while increasing the intelligence behind it.”
Matthew Malady
General Manager of Customer Engagement, CommBank
For Burnett, it’s about effectively blending human and machine. “Often, AI can make more precise decisions, but you still need to have a human in the driver’s seat, doing things in a very intentional way with the proper controls, balances and measures,” she explained.
Proving the value.
For ART, the metrics speak volumes. Net present value, inflows, retained funds and pension conversions are all markers of stronger customer outcomes and engagement. “The actions people take to improve financial wellness are good for them – and good for us,” said Burnett.
At CommBank, success is measured in actions, in outcomes and in sentiment. A high Net Promoter Score, a 70% year-on-year drop in scam-related losses and feedback showing that friction points like security prompts are building trust, not frustration, all show the impact of putting people first.
A better future, powered by AI and guided by purpose.
When financial services brands align around outcomes, enable experimentation and apply AI with care, the results are clear: more confident customers, more scalable support and more value for everyone.
That makes financial wellness as much a shared journey as a goal to achieve. With the right foundation, AI can help make it more personal, more proactive and more powerful than ever.
Read our new report, A blueprint for delivering personalised financial wellness in Australia and New Zealand.
As Adobe’s Principle Digital Strategist, John Mackenney advises the senior leadership at Adobe’s enterprise customers on strategies for customer experience transformation and digital innovation. John brings together a wealth of knowledge in industry development and practical implementation experience to help customers devise comprehensive transformation programs.
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