This is according to the Westpac First Job Report, which found Australian teens are landing their first job at an average age of 15.4 years, compared to 16.3 years for their parents. While seven out of 10 young people surveyed prioritised money and financial independence when looking for their first job, more than two thirds lacked the confidence to open a bank account to be paid into. Hospitality is the most common industry most Australians will work in for their first job.Source:istock Job administration, such as setting up a tax file number and superannuation, was another area where teens (57 per cent) felt unsure and almost half (44 per cent) were too afraid to ask in an interview how much a job paid. To provide guidance to young job seekers, Westpac launched Wendy, Australia's first digital job coach. Meet Wendy, Westpac's first digital job coach who listens and responds in real time.Source:Supplied Using Wendy is similar to conducting a FaceTime call as she can listen, speak and recognise human emotions in real-time.

Member-owned financial services provider CUA is currently piloting a chatbot for its health insurance business that Head of Digital Innovation Melissa Witheriff said helps customers move through the process of purchasing insurance. Speaking at D61 LIVE in Brisbane on Tuesday, Witheriff said that CUA is pushing itself into emerging technologies such as AI, and is doing so with the help of partners, in particular fintechs. "Because we're a small organisation, or relatively small, we need to innovate through partnerships, whether that's with universities, corporates, or the fintech ecosystem," she explained. "In this situation, we're partnering with fintechs to be able to bring AI into the experience that we offer for our members." Specifically, CUA is working with AI-focused Flamingo and the Sydney-based firm's virtual sales assistant Sam.

New technology and new ideas are constantly changing and improving the way we do things. From Skype to Uber and everything in between, the recent years have seen a raft of innovations across just about every industry you can imagine. And there are more big changes on the way for the banking industry. So what does the rise of AI mean for Australian banks and how can consumers benefit from this new technology? Let's take a closer look.

Westpac CIO Dave Curran has revealed his bank's five-platform plan for IT, one that, just like any digital transformation in 2018, places the customer at the centre, followed by platforms for payments, staff, data, and infrastructure. Speaking at Oracle Cloud World in Sydney on Tuesday, Curran detailed Westpac's approach to simplifying the existing structure it has, setting the scene to allow for artificial intelligence (AI) to take centre stage. The next wave of IT innovation will be powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. We look at the ways companies can take advantage of it and how to get started. The first platform is around the customer, with Curran noting that if the customer is going to be the centre of what an organisation does, the first platform must align.

Australian bank Westpac is to trial the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its digital banking systems, as it looks to automate customers' queries. With the rise of digital banking, Westpac's general manager of consumer digital, Travis Tyler, says it is looking at using "bots" to respond to customers' simple questions. One example includes the bank working on a "proof of concept" over the next six months for a digital system to provide answers to consumer questions about the best deposit rates available. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Tyler says: "If your term deposit is rolling over, and you simply ask, 'What's the best rate, this is what I want to achieve?', it will come back with the best options and you can simply say, 'Yeah, book it.'" Another example cited by Tyler includes answering simple questions about payments between accounts.