Published on the 18/02/2016 | Written by Beverley Head
In the past, when customers approached NAB for a personal loan, it took the bank around 12 days to respond – a new software platform now means they could win approvals in one day…
A successful trial in the Northern Territory and South Australia begun in 2015 will be followed by a national rollout of the system during 2016.
NAB has been on its ten year NextGen technology revamp designed to replace 10,000 pieces of equipment, transition to a new data centre and launch a new payments system by 2016 for the last eight years, partnering with Oracle as its main software supplier.
The bank claims that the new personal banking origination platform “is the biggest technology overhaul in the bank’s history,” and is a key part of its progressive rollout of the Oracle Banking Platform.
Abandoning any vestiges of big bang radical overhauls a NAB spokesman said the bank is moving to a “delivery model that has smaller, more frequent technology drops that improve the customer experience.”
The planned rollout of the new personal banking platform during 2016 will make the personal loan origination system available to all NAB’s bankers. Besides personal loans, the system is managing credit card applications, which the bank claims now take just seven minutes.
Steve Collier, executive general manager for core banking said that benefits weren’t just for clients. “For our bankers, we’ve streamlined processes by reducing the number of clicks to complete a loan application from 250 down to 50, which significantly reduces errors and improves turnaround times.”
All of Australia’s big four banks (including laggard ANZ which has a new CEO who has indicated it’s finally time for an IT rethink) now see their information platforms as not only the foundation of everything they do, but potentially as a competitive weapon – allowing them to deliver new customer services quickly, while keeping costs in check.
Commonwealth Bank, which was the first to complete its core systems overhaul to an SAP platform, is now facing increasing competition from Westpac which is on track with its upgrade from the Hogan to Celeriti core banking system. Westpac is also expected to announce within three months which software vendor will partner on the development of its customer service hub which will provide integrated access to all customer records.
