What Happened
Credit reporting bureau Experian published its Connected Intelligence report in August 2026, drawing on responses from 102 senior decision-makers across Australia's lending market. The headline finding: almost three quarters of respondents (72 per cent) are already using agentic AI to assist underwriters with recommendations or decision support.
The data infrastructure behind that adoption tells a different story. Just 3 per cent of respondents said their data was fully AI-ready. 67 per cent said it was either not ready or only partially ready to support AI-driven decisioning.
Mathew Demetriou, managing director of software solutions at Experian Australia and New Zealand, pointed to the gap between deployment speed and governance maturity. "What we're seeing with Australian lenders is that AI is already in underwriting workflows with the research showing 72 per cent are using agentic AI for decision support, but the harder question being asked is how to trust and govern it at scale, especially as regulators sharpen their focus on how data is used," he said.
The report also found that most lenders remain early in their AI journey. More than seven in 10 respondents (72 per cent) described their organisation as either emerging or early in its use of AI across fraud and credit risk underwriting. Only 11 per cent said AI was widely implemented across underwriting processes.
Why It Matters
The gap between adoption and data readiness carries direct consequences for credit decisions affecting Australian borrowers. 69 per cent of respondents agreed that data quality and governance were among the reasons AI implementations fail. 84 per cent said transparency of analytics and insights was highly valuable to improving decisions, according to the Experian report.
Regulators are paying attention. Demetriou noted that scrutiny over how data is used in automated lending decisions is intensifying, a point consistent with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's published guidance on algorithmic decision-making in financial services.
Human oversight remains the dominant preference. 51 per cent of respondents said they were comfortable allowing AI to make decisions without human review only for low-risk decisions. Just 2 per cent were comfortable with fully autonomous decisioning at scale across most use cases.
Key Details
The three biggest barriers to scaling AI were all operational. Fragmented data systems, which prevent a unified customer view, were cited by 45 per cent of respondents. Poor data quality came next at 42 per cent, followed by a lack of trust in AI outputs at 31 per cent.
One institution described in the report has moved to a multi-agent model for payslip verification. A spokesperson explained the before-and-after: "For customers, a payslip is just one document in an application process. For our people, verifying it can be really complex, time-consuming, and full of policy judgements."
The same spokesperson described the new workflow: "Now our specialist agents work together around the banker. They can classify the payslip, they read it, they can extract the data, run the calculations in the back, and verify it against policy before giving our banker the output to review and continue the application with speed, confidence, and trust."
That system is processing upwards of 1.5 million transactions and more than 32,000 payslips every week, according to figures cited in the report.
Despite the readiness concerns, appetite for AI-enabled decisioning is strong. 92 per cent of Australian respondents said they would pilot, test or adopt a vendor that could meet their data, software and AI needs for fraud and credit risk underwriting.
Background and Context
Australian banks have been public about their AI investment strategies. One major bank stated its position in terms of proprietary advantage: "We are not simply buying generic intelligence. We are strengthening advantages that are hard to replicate: customer relationships at scale, deep knowledge of the Australian economy, secure use of data and the everyday banking relationships we earn with customers."
The Experian report frames the current moment as one where deployment has outpaced foundations. As Demetriou put it: "The foundations underneath AI still need to catch up."
What Comes Next
The report does not set a timeline for when Australian lenders expect to close the data readiness gap. With 92 per cent of respondents open to vendor partnerships that address data, software and AI needs together, the findings point to continued investment in data infrastructure alongside AI tooling. Regulatory scrutiny over automated credit decisions is expected to continue, with ASIC and the OAIC both active in the space.