{"id":896416,"date":"2026-09-18T10:14:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T10:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/896416\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T10:14:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T10:14:36","slug":"westpac-spends-us12000-in-ai-tokens-on-intranet-migration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/896416\/","title":{"rendered":"Westpac spends US$12,000 in AI tokens on intranet migration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Key points<\/p>\n

Westpac migrated its internal intranet for $12,000 USD in AI tokens, versus a typical low seven-figure cost and about a year’s work.
\nChief AI officer Dan Jermyn cited the project as an early win from the bank’s AI engineering partnership with Amp, revealed last month.
\nChief data, digital and AI officer Andrew McMullan said he is careful about isolating AI’s exact impact, while Jermyn noted token costs remain closely monitored.<\/p>\n

\"Westpac<\/p>\n


\n Westpac’s Dan Jermyn. \n <\/p>\n

Westpac has accomplished a technology project that would ordinarily have cost \u201clow seven figures\u201d with AI and for a fraction of that outlay.<\/p>\n

Chief AI officer Dan Jermyn told the bank\u2019s data, digital and AI update this week that the project is an early win from its AI engineering work with Amp.<\/p>\n

The partnership with Amp was only revealed last month<\/a>, but is aimed at \u201cusing AI to help transform how the bank builds and delivers technology, supporting major programs and delivering improved digital experiences in weeks rather than months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that the partnership is predicated on faster delivery, it makes sense to have a ready example that the predicted return-on-investment (ROI) is being realised.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur partnership with Amp is unlocking a huge amount of value in engineering,\u201d Jermyn said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn one of our examples we\u2019re migrating our internal intranet to a new system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a project that typically would cost low seven figures to achieve and take about a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were able to complete that with a cost of $12,000 USD ($16,880) in [AI] tokens. Obviously, the ROI there is very clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exact value-adding role of AI in projects may not always be this clear cut, however – and chief data, digital and AI officer Andrew McMullan said that is intentional.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked in this game for almost three decades, and I\u2019m always careful about trying to isolate the exact impact that AI has on a particular initiative,\u201d McMullan said.<\/p>\n

McMullan indicated, for example, that the bank could use intelligence, in the form of behavioural signals from customers, to feed into AI work or as a prompt for frontline teams to make contact with a customer directly.<\/p>\n

The emphasis is on the utility of the signal or the data, noting that value from the data could be derived in multiple ways, and it didn\u2019t necessarily make sense to isolate what only AI brought to the table in that context.<\/p>\n

Still, it is hard to escape a cost conversation around AI use, and Jermyn acknowledged that token usage remains under close observation.<\/p>\n

Westpac has previously said it has AI token trackers on desktops<\/a> to show users what they are spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the ways we think about this is how do you manage increasing costs and increasing use of these tools while you\u2019re still returning great value,\u201d Jermyn said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing this, [for example], by being very thoughtful about model interoperability and with close analysis and monitoring of the way we\u2019re using technology, particularly tokens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously with the success we\u2019ve seen [using AI], we\u2019re seeing an increase in the number of tokens being used, but actually the unit economics, the cost per token that we\u2019re seeing through Amp \u2026 is continually being squeezed as well, so they\u2019re actually progressing broadly at the same rate [as value creation].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key points Westpac migrated its internal intranet for $12,000 USD in AI tokens, versus a typical low seven-figure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":896417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-896416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/896417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}