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Say hello to Ella, the generative AI banker from One Zero Bank. With the tagline of ‘effortless banking, exceptional service’, the bank promises Ella is their customers’ private digital banker, understanding needs in real time, answering a wide range of questions, and even acting proactively when required. She operates 24/7, in multiple languages, with bank-grade reliability.

Ella has also transformed how customers interact with the bank. The numbers, according to the Israeli company, speak for themselves, Since launch, customer engagement has grown by 50%, with more conversations, more questions and higher day-to-day activity. Yet despite this surge, Ella still resolves 80% of all enquiries end-to-end, ensuring customers get instant, accurate answers while human teams handle far fewer tickets. It’s increased engagement with reduced effort - the ideal balance for modern banking.

The broader impact is just as strong. Ella contributes to a 60% reduction in cases requiring human involvement. Customer numbers have doubled, and satisfaction has risen by 25%. She also drives a 15% increase in upsell, identifying relevant product opportunities customers do not currently hold and turning daily conversations into revenue-generating interactions. This is what Niv Netzer, product leader at One Zero Bank, calls the ‘holy grail’: reducing cost while increasing customer satisfaction and revenue.

Netzer admits the latter came as a bit of a surprise to the company, but in all other aspects, One Zero was ready. More than ready, in fact. One Zero was designed from day one to be an AI-first bank. founder Amnon Shashua had previously co-founded autonomous driving company Mobileye, later acquired for $15.3bn by Intel. Having secured its banking license in early 2022, the vision, Netzer explains, was that AI could do what every human could do, just faster and better, with personalised engagement at scale.

“One Zero was built to be an AI-native bank ,” says Netzer. The arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022 accelerated the bank’s roadmap dramatically. “We realised what we planned to achieve in three years was suddenly possible immediately.”

Still, just before Ella’s launch in late 2023, there was a moment of hesitation. “We were afraid,” Netzer admits. “But the conclusion was clear: we cannot not do it. Our customers expect us to lead in AI.”

“In 2025, everyone is familiar with GPT, and they are actually, really waiting for the banks and any other institution to deliver this same level of customer service, customer expectations have changed,” adds Netzer, Recognising this shift, One Zero has begun offering Ella as a white-label solution, enabling other financial institutions to unlock the same benefits.

User trust, both with end user customers and employees, is key. Building out a truly cross-functional team – think lawyers working alongside developers – was an important part. For the internal side, Netzer presented at a board meeting to outline just how aligned the company was, from product and QA right up to board level. “You need all of the company to trust [Ella], because it’s an enormous change,” says Netzer.

It is no shock to find that generative AI is changing the game in banking; a study from Juniper Research and Zopa in August forecast UK banks will invest £1.8 billion in genAI by 2030, with 27,000 job roles at risk of change. Netzer describes gen AI as the ‘most exciting and amazing era to work on’, and offers insight as to keeping up with the pace of innovation.

“You must always innovate, find this unique solution,” says Netzer. “This is for people that are quick learners, people that would love to learn through building. If you want to be an AI strategy developer, product, you must be an early adopter of this technology; but because it’s changing so fast, you must iterate fast and solve problems as you move.”

“Another key point is you cannot be perfect,” adds Netzer. “If you want to be always 100% and like a seamless flow, gen AI is not the place for you. You need to be more adaptive, and know to handle and get a problem and find a quicker solution for it.”

Netzer is speaking at Fintech Connect, on December 2-3 in London, and he is looking to emphasise the opportunity Ella presents to banks. His message is simple: just go and do it! And for institutions unsure where to start, the white-label version offers a proven, turnkey path.

“It’s really working every day,” he says. “Our customers already sent more than five million messages to Ella, so it’s working, and it’s not AI-washing, it’s real, and it’s delivering value right now. Don’t hide behind internal pilots. Bring it to your customers.”

Beyond that, the sky is the limit. “My dream is that people will act with Ella as they act with Google or ChatGPT - every financial question they’ll ask Ella” says Netzer. “Why? Because she has customer’s full financial context and provides bank-grade accuracy you can trust.

“It’s not like ChatGPT which hallucinate. It’s bank-grade accuracy that you can trust.”