Customers Bank has announced a multiyear strategic collaboration with OpenAI aimed at deploying artificial intelligence across its commercial banking operations.
The partnership will see Customers Bank work directly with OpenAI’s technical teams to develop bespoke AI capabilities built around the bank’s own processes, data, and institutional knowledge, rather than relying on off-the-shelf tools. The collaboration covers three core operational domains: lending, deposits, and payments.
Within lending, AI will be deployed to manage document collection, credit memoranda preparation, legal documents, and post-closing portfolio monitoring. On the deposits side, AI will be used to streamline digital onboarding and account setup. In payments, the technology will be applied to enhance cubiX — the bank’s proprietary payments platform processing $2 trillion — with agent-ready APIs and AI-driven risk and compliance tooling.
All AI capabilities will be deployed within Customers Bank’s existing secure enterprise infrastructure, with data governance, access controls, and risk management built into the design from the outset. The bank has indicated that AI is already live in production and advancing across the three focus areas.
The collaboration represents an expansion of a relationship that began in 2023, when Customers Bank was an early adopter of ChatGPT Enterprise. Today, 75% of the bank’s workforce uses tools powered by OpenAI. The bank has described the arrangement as a step toward becoming one of the first AI-native regional banks in the United States, with the longer-term vision of having its bankers spend more time on client-facing work by the end of 2026.
Customers Bank sits within Customers Bancorp, one of the 80 largest bank holding companies in the US. The bank serves commercial and consumer clients through a full suite of technology-enabled products delivered via a single point-of-contact model. Its lending portfolio spans commercial and industrial lending, commercial real estate, residential and personal lending, as well as national corporate banking services across fund finance, venture banking, healthcare, mortgage finance, and equipment finance.
The bank has been named a top 10 performing bank by American Banker for five consecutive years from 2021 to 2025, including the number one position among midsize banks in 2024. It ranked 45th on the Forbes Best Banks list of the 100 largest publicly traded banks in 2026, and holds a net promoter score of 81 against an industry average of 41.
Customers Bancorp president and CEO Sam Sidhu said, “We expect a fundamental re-engineering of how Customers Bank operates. We have spent the last year building the operational and governance infrastructure to deploy AI at scale. Today, 75% of our team members use tools powered by OpenAI.
“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. This strategic engagement positions us to be the leader in AI adoption among regional banks. By the end of 2026, our bankers will spend more of their time on the work that creates value for clients and our shareholders.”
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