However bots don't just make themselves. They need to be built. They need to be maintained. And they need to be implemented. We have to re-skill people to do that.

To make our own business more credible to our clients, we try to do things to ourselves first. We are automating our payroll process for instance. At first it was done offshore in places such as India, where we have an extensive team. But now with a bot, we can actually process the payroll in Australia, using a machine that thinks intuitively.

That's a simple example of RPA, as we explore how we can do work very differently. I think of it as a machine working next to a person, not as a machine replacing a person.

It's true there have been some spectacular chatbot failures in other industries. However, those deployed in financial services seem to have been designed with customers' needs firmly in mind – and that is the secret – keeping customer outcomes at the forefront.

One of the reasons we established our global alliance with Apple, for instance, is that it allows us to work collaboratively with them to completely rethink the way work gets done in an enterprise. And to link the way people actually live their lives and the way they do work.

We also recently announced an alliance with Amazon Web Services where we work together to leverage the cloud, so that along with our clients we have access to real time information.

In May we will kick off a taskforce on the future of work which I have been asked to chair, working with Jennifer Westacott from the Business Council of Australia.

If we do this right, we will make a valuable contribution to driving prosperity in Australia by getting unemployment down, underemployment down, and re-skilling people for the way they are going to work in the future.

It is pretty exciting.

This week's Financial Review Banking & Wealth Summit will debate issues such as these. Not just how technology is changing work, but how to focus on the ethics of work and conduct. Businesses need to know that unless we all get this right, we will not attract the customers or the talent that we need, and we will not achieve what we strive to do. For Deloitte our clear purpose is to make an impact that matters to our communities and to business.

Cindy Hook is CEO of Deloitte and will open The Financial Review Banking & Wealth Summit on 5 April in Sydney.