Customers Bancorp CEO Samvir Sidhu said on the bank's Q3 2026 earnings call on October 23, 2026, that AI-powered loan underwriting has cut the bank's underwriting cycle time by 95%.

"We scaled our AI powered loan underwriting process adding functionality and increasing utilization," Sidhu said.

The bank also rebuilt its commercial deposit onboarding process, piloting it in 10 weeks. Accounts now open in minutes instead of days, a cycle time reduction of more than 90%.

"We are currently in a phase of reimagining and automating end to end workflows coupled with rapid product development," Sidhu said.

Sidhu said the bank's team "doubled the number of AI agents deployed" during the quarter. "Cumulative estimated hours saved have now grown to 76 thousand," he said, and the bank has "unlocked an estimated $15 million+ of annualized capacity."

The week's banking, insurance and brokerage deployments. Tuesdays.

He said the gains are appearing in the bank's results. Revenue per employee rose 13% and pretax profit per employee rose 34% on an annualized basis year over year, which Sidhu said ranks the bank No. 1 and No. 4, respectively, among banks with $10 billion to $100 billion in assets.

CFO Mark McCollom said the bank is "redeploying the capacity that AI creates into revenue production." The bank has more than 60 people focused on AI transformation, along with 12 forward-deployed engineers from partners working in pods with its own engineers.

Loans are an area "where we are really leaning in heavily with OpenAI," Sidhu said, while Palantir is a partner on complex commercial deposit account opening.

Asked whether Palantir could eventually replace the bank's core system, Sidhu said the bank is "not trying to sort of reinvent, you know, the software wheel," and is focused instead on end-to-end automated workflows with the goal of becoming "an AI-native" bank.

The bank has also launched voice agents on its main customer service line, is expanding an AI digital twin pilot to more members across the organization, and enabled programmable subaccounts on its cubiX platform, "broadening potential Agentic payment use cases."

Customers Bancorp is targeting a low-forties run-rate efficiency ratio by the end of 2027. "AI is moving from pilot to production, and it is already showing up in our numbers with more opportunity ahead," Sidhu said, adding that this "should enable us to grow revenue meaningfully faster than expenses."