ANZ stands up an 'enterprise AI control plane'

ANZ Banking Group has stood up an ‘enterprise AI control plane’ that is providing centralised governance and control, particularly as the bank starts using more AI agents.

It’s not clear what software the control plane is based on, or whether the bank had outside help in building and configuring it.

iTnews sought comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

The AI control plane was touted as a key part of the bank’s AI work during FY26 by group CEO Nuno Matos at its annual results presentation.

“We have existing controls in place including multiple AI gateways and a governance council. We are building on this by implementing an enterprise AI control plane which will provide visibility, governance and technical control across users, models, agents, tools, costs and platforms, as well as traceability of decisions,” Matos said.

“As we increasingly use AI agents, humans must remain in control. 

“Our enterprise control plane will set defined limits on what agents can and do, and stop activity where it operates outside of those limits.”

ANZ joins the likes of Telstra in standing up a control plane structure. It was recently revealed that Accenture played a role in building the Telstra capability.

A blog post by ANZ CIO Donald Patra offered no additional detail on the architecture of the bank’s control plane.

ANZ became the third of the big four banks to highlight AI investments in their annual results presentations in a little over a week.

While ANZ concentrated on the control plane, as well as outlining some percentage productivity gains from specific AI use cases, Westpac headlined its discussion of AI investments with a direct dollar saving attribution on a specific project, while NAB focused on a new AI assistant provided to its staff, that is based on technology from Anthropic.

Matos said that ANZ’s approach to adopting AI “is deliberately targeted”.

Specifically, the bank wants to “deliver a more relevant, personalised experience to our customers and better tools for our bankers; simplify work and increase organisational productivity and capacity; and strengthen how we manage risk.”

“Rather than pursuing AI everywhere, we are prioritising opportunities which unquestionably deliver value and accelerate our strategic initiatives with right-sized investment spend,” Matos said.

“Our AI use cases require [a] clear business outcome, where the technology can be embedded into the way work gets done and where it can be scaled across the bank.

“That work is supported by robust governance, which is already in place and controls that we are continuing to strengthen.”

ANZ highlighted an AI-enabled CRM system, AI tooling for engineers, and AI applications in the bank’s contact centre as examples of where it is successfully putting the technology to work.

ANZ reported a cash profit of $7.59 billion for the year ended September 30, an increase of 31 percent compared to the previous year.