"I'm looking to automate as much as I can at Westpac over time and utilise more data analytics and offer services like this to more of our institutional clients.

"Corporate Australia is crying out for insights about their businesses, and the data we have about their sectors can have such a big impact and be packaged in such a way that we can provide more insights. It's not about selling the data, but generating insights."

Speedy development

Westpac partnered with tech consultancy Infosys to develop the proof-of-concept, which was build on R3 Corda blockchain technology.

It only took the two the firms three months to develop the new procurement platform, for which it also collaborated with enterprise clients such as reinforcing steel supplier Ausreo, IVE and Iluka.

Mr Van Not said the project had originated from Westpac's trade finance team, which had not seen much innovation in the procurement space, after brainstorming with customers about the pain points they faced in procurement.

"A lot of people had already made improvements using blockchain, or artificial intelligence, but we looked at what we could do if we married these technologies together," he said.

"I'm a traditional banker, so for me, this was like being a caveman coming out into the light. I'd go to conferences and people were talking about a future where machines would help people make better decisions. This was a powerful glimpse of that future."


Banking blockchains

The new proof-of-concept comes after Westpac joined forces with ANZ, IBM and shopping centre operator Scentre Group last year to trial digitising the bank guarantee process used for commercial property leasing.

In 2017 the bank was also one of 40 global banks to invest a combined $US107 million into R3 – the global consortium developing distributed ledger technology.

Westpac identified challenges in commercialising the proof-of-concept such as the storage and visualisation of mass amounts of data, data availability and quality, customisation of the artificial intelligence algorithms for different industries and businesses, and widespread use of private blockchains such as R3 or Hyperledger.

Should the procurement platform be commercialised, it would put the bank in competition with existing software solutions such as SAP Ariba.

Mr Van Not said ultimately the bank now sees itself as a technology company.

"Looking at the bank nowadays, we're a technology company with a banking licence," he said.

"That's why we're spending time with developers, doing this proof-of-concept and talking about these things at conferences."