Ada Guan and the bank that asks why

Five people. Three chairs. Ada Guan’s recollection of RDC’s early days has the pleasing inconvenience of an actual startup. Before there were international banking partnerships, there was apparently a small furniture problem. An ambitious idea can fit on a whiteboard; its authors still need somewhere to sit.

Guan had arrived with years of experience in large organisations. She had worked across retail, banking and enterprise software, including Woolworths, Westpac and Oracle. In 2016, she co-founded the business that became RDC.AI. The aim was to help lenders understand borrowers well enough to extend credit more intelligently. Her new company would have to earn a place inside institutions she already knew were complicated.

That background makes her story interesting. The decision to leave corporate life came after seeing how it worked from several sides. She knew the bank, the software supplier and the customer’s need for something useful. The missing chairs were an early reminder that experience could travel with her. Corporate resources could not.

The meeting that did not go to plan

One of Guan’s stories begins at Westpac, after she moved there from Woolworths. She thought some effective technology approaches from retail could be useful in banking. A senior architect disagreed forcefully, rejected the proposal and left the meeting.

Guan kept talking to him. Over time, she recalled, they came to understand and respect each other’s positions. The architect became a close working ally. It is a better ending than the satisfying but rather expensive fantasy of winning every argument on the first attempt.

Her later work at Oracle involved advising senior leaders at global banks on digital change and fintech strategy. She had also helped shape technology strategy at Westpac. These were jobs in which a proposal had to make sense to people responsible for large operations. A clever idea still needed to survive the institution.

When Guan assembled RDC’s founding team, she drew on relationships already tested at work. Michael Coomer was a former boss. Gordon Campbell had been her Oracle colleague. Charles Guan, her brother, brought technology leadership experience. The shared history mattered: the people starting the company had reasons to trust one another before the company had much history of its own.

A borrower is more than a backward glance

Consider the small retailer Guan uses to explain the lending problem. Its earnings may be uneven through the year. A quiet period, read without context, can make a business look less dependable than it is. Seasonal patterns complicate the picture. The banker needs to understand the pattern, rather than simply meet it at an unfortunate moment.

RDC’s work with Westpac brought that idea into business lending. Transaction history could help reveal patterns and support projections of future cash flow. The ambition was to give bankers a fuller view of the business: where it had been, where it stood and what might be coming.

“That look into the future is the core capability we are offering.”Ada Guan

There is an ordinary human problem inside this technical one. A business needs to explain itself to a lender. A lender needs enough confidence to decide. If the available record captures only part of the business, both sides have a harder conversation. Guan’s interest in financial inclusion begins in that gap between a borrower’s circumstances and a bank’s ability to understand them.

The explanation belongs in the product

More information creates another question. What happens when a system reaches a decision and the person using it cannot explain why? For Guan, transparency belongs in the design of lending AI. RDC’s approach became known as glass-box AI, with the intention that people could understand how decisions were reached.

The phrase is usefully domestic. A glass box lets someone look inside. In lending, that view has a practical purpose: people must be able to question an answer, understand its reasoning and use it responsibly. A result that appears convincing on a screen still has to make sense in a conversation.

RDC was Guan’s first startup. She has described the adjustment from corporate life as a learning curve, particularly around scarce resources and hiring. She learned to look beyond a candidate’s ability to perform a role and consider whether the person’s values, adaptability and commitment suited a young business.

The two concerns sit comfortably together. A transparent product and a dependable team both require attention before the difficult moment arrives. Her public account of building RDC repeatedly returns to that preparatory work. The company’s purpose was financial inclusion; the everyday task was finding people who could keep working towards it.

Someone has to hold the rope

Guan is a rock climber, and she has connected the hobby to entrepreneurship with unusual specificity. The person belaying you has a job: keeping you safe if you fall. To move higher, you may have to release a hand. Progress involves dependence on someone else as well as a willingness to try.

She links those experiences to ambition, trust and resilience within RDC. It gives her account of leadership a tangible setting. Trust means another person holding the rope while you attempt something uncertain. Risk means making a move before you can enjoy the security of the next hold.

“Only when you have the strength to have a go, you have a chance to actually get to the top.”Ada Guan

Climbing also turns up in the company’s welcome for new colleagues. In 2024, Guan described a busy week of eight arrivals, with orientation and rock climbing both on the agenda. The same update included new North American leadership appointments and a Melbourne office. Geographic expansion and introductions to the climbing wall apparently belonged in the same week.

It is a small detail, but it makes the team easier to picture. A company growing into new markets is also a collection of new people learning how to work together. The organisation chart records the positions. Guan’s account supplies some of the introductions.

The long way into a bank

Money gave RDC room to take its next steps. In November 2023, the company announced an initial A$28 million Series B close, led by Westpac and nCino. A further A$9 million from Acorn Capital brought the round to A$37 million in 2024, with North American expansion a stated purpose.

The relationships around that funding were useful beyond the money itself. Westpac was involved in RDC’s Australian banking work. nCino was a cloud banking partner with a route into other institutions. Expansion depended on a network of organisations doing things together, as well as on Guan’s company developing its technology.

In May 2024, M&T became RDC’s first US banking customer. The deal was facilitated through nCino, whose continuous credit monitoring offering used RDC’s platform. The work included looking for early warning signs and giving the bank more information about borrowers and its lending portfolio.

For Guan, the milestone made an international ambition concrete. A bank using the platform was a different kind of progress from an expansion plan. It placed the company’s work inside the routines of another institution, with another set of bankers and customers.

Her 2024 reflections paired that milestone with customers going live, new capabilities and an expanding team. She remembered the shortage of chairs even while describing colleagues across Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore and the US. Growth had made the early furniture arithmetic funny enough to preserve.

Back on the other side of graduation

Guan’s connection with UNSW has continued through alumni events and conversations with aspiring entrepreneurs. She holds an Executive MBA from AGSM and a master’s degree in computer engineering from UNSW. In 2023, she spoke at an AGSM industry showcase, describing the importance that mentoring had played in her own career.

In 2024, she returned to address AGSM’s graduating class. Her recollection of her own graduation included pride, excitement and uncertainty about what came next. Now she had a founder’s experience to bring to the occasion, including a decision to leave an established role and build something with other people.

The advice she shared included taking an opportunity when it appears, trusting the team through difficult stretches and relying on friends and mentors. There is room in that advice for an uncertain person. A career decision need not arrive with confidence neatly attached.

At a UNSW Founders event, her message was similarly measured: “Change gradually but safely. Steady progress is key.” It is a fitting thought for someone selling new technology into banks. The ambition can be large while the next step remains deliberate.

Still asking why

Rich Data Co became RDC.AI in April 2025. The new name made the company’s emphasis on artificial intelligence explicit. By then, Guan was describing a team that had grown from four founders in 2016 to more than 70 people in 2025.

The founding story also gained an anniversary perspective. In 2024, Guan had been an AmCham Australia Alliance Awards AI category finalist. In August 2026, M&T announced that its work with RDC.AI had received the Editor’s Choice award at the Banking Tech Awards USA. The bank described clearer portfolio insights, earlier identification of risks and fewer unnecessary alerts.

On October 6, 2026, RDC.AI launched Cowork, an AI workspace for commercial banking. The product brings plain-English questions together with a bank’s portfolio, policies and decision platform. Its published design includes governed tools, permissions tied to the user and records that allow work to be reviewed later.

The product has changed the form of the question: a banker can ask in a conversation rather than request a report. The need behind Guan’s work remains recognisable. Understand the business. Make a decision that people can examine. Leave enough of a record for the next person who asks why.

Ten years on, the story has acquired investment rounds, international customers and a shorter company name. The early chairs still make a good anecdote. The more consequential question is what the people sitting in them can explain.