Which Australian Industries Use AI Most? NAB Ranks Them

Australian SMEs no longer adopt AI at one speed. They adopt it at two. In property services, 69 per cent are already using AI. In transport and storage, just 21 per cent are. That 48-point gap — from NAB's April 2026 survey of roughly 670 small and medium businesses — is the real story hiding under the national average of just over four in ten.

The average tells you almost nothing about your own odds. What sector you're in tells you a lot.

NAB's report, *Embracing AI*, ranked adoption across the non-farm economy. The top three are the data-heavy, desk-bound sectors: property services at 69 per cent, finance and insurance at 65, and business services at 61. The bottom three are the physical, margin-thin ones: manufacturing at 35 per cent, retail at 22, and transport and storage at 21. Retail also had the highest outright rejection rate — 64 per cent of retailers weren't using AI at all.

NAB's own explanation for the split is worth quoting. The laggard sectors, it found, "generally operate with tighter margins, legacy systems, and fragmented supply chains — constraints that make AI integration more challenging." The leaders, by contrast, run on clean data and analytical workflows that AI slots straight into — forecasting, compliance, and process automation.

If you run an accounting firm, a law practice, a consultancy or an agency, you sit near the front of the pack — business services adoption is 61 per cent. That is not a bragging right. It's a warning. When most of your competitors already use AI, the baseline has moved. The firm still quoting, drafting and reconciling entirely by hand isn't holding a neutral position; it's quietly falling behind on turnaround time and cost per file. We've written about the widening gap between big and small firms on AI — the sector data adds a second axis to watch.

If you run a trade, a transport operation or a workshop, the opposite is true — and it's better news than it looks. Low adoption in your sector means the value is still on the table and almost none of your competitors have claimed it. The first electrician in a postcode to answer every call with an AI receptionist, or the first fabricator to quote straight from a job photo, isn't matching the market. They're beating it.

Not sure which lane your trade or firm is in, or where the easiest win sits? See how exposed — and how ready — your sector is before you spend a dollar on tools.

Want to know what this means for your business? We'll map it in one call.

The gap isn't about spending more. At the COSBOA National Small Business Summit in Sydney on 5 August, the operators who'd made AI pay described the same discipline: pick one job and do it properly. Chris Tate of coffee roaster Pablo & Rusty's uses AI for food costing and rostering, and his advice was to start with a single practical use case, not a shopping list of tools. Lindy Hua of CO2LAB called AI the company's "second brain" — a way for a lean team to automate routine tasks and hold onto what it knows.

That matches what NAB found the leaders doing. Automating repetitive tasks was the single biggest opportunity named by finance and insurance SMEs — 64 per cent of them. Not reinventing the business; removing the admin drag one workflow at a time. It also explains why adoption and results so often diverge: NAB rated SME workforce readiness at just 3.8 out of 10, with only 17 per cent of businesses highly prepared. Buying the tool is easy. Changing one workflow around it is the part that pays — the same reason we keep seeing tools bought but value missed.

Whichever lane you're in, the move is the same — and it is not "adopt AI". Pick the one workflow where a delay costs you money: quoting, scheduling, invoicing, or the phone that goes unanswered. Put AI on that one thing, end to end. Measure it in dollars within 90 days. If your sector already leads, this is how you stay ahead of a rising baseline. If it lags, this is how you open a gap your competitors haven't thought to close.

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