NAB lifts engagement 40% when its Pegasystems-powered Customer Brain nudges customers

NAB says its customers want to feel their bank knows them rather than just their account number, with consistent experiences in the app, over the phone and in branches. With over 118 million mobile logins each month, the bank wanted every interaction to count. Early on, it faced the risk of designing hundreds of different contact policies.

NAB launched its Customer Brain in 2023, an AI-powered engine that delivers the next best action, such as a helpful reminder, a timely nudge or a moment of recognition, and helps guide more than 50 million interactions every month. It runs on Pegasystems' Customer Decision Hub, with over 2,000 adaptive models and 1,200 data points powering 220 next best actions. Instead of designing hundreds of different contact policies, the bank standardised its approach, which it says brought faster delivery, consistent experiences and a clearer path to market. Actions cover transaction disputes, home loan milestones, term deposit expiries and equipment finance lease endings.

In just over a year, the Brain helped drive a 40% uplift in customer engagement when it nudged a customer about an action. Proactive prompts around term deposit expiries resulted in approximately $92 million in retained deposits, and milestone-based home loan actions outperformed standard messages by 50%. Transaction dispute updates reached up to 55% engagement, and equipment finance lease-end offers reached up to 60%.

• Standardise contact policies early instead of designing a separate policy for every journey.
• Treat always-on decisioning as a learning system that adapts to what customers like and dislike, not as set and forget.
• Anchor next best actions in moments customers care about, such as dispute progress, loan milestones and expiring products.