Bank Australia progresses 2025 transformation program

Bank Australia is starting to replace its end-of-life loan origination system under a broader enterprise-wide digitisation and transformation program that runs through to 2025.

Credit: Bank Australia

The customer-owned bank will partner will Cloudcase Software Solutions (CSS) for the new loan origination platform, which runs atop AWS.

Head of lending Martyn Norman told iTnews that Bank Australia's core, as well as its loan origination system, is presently provided by Data Action.

"Data Action made a decision that the loan origination system was coming to end-of-life, and they weren't going to provide an alternative system, so they went out to all their customers and advised them they needed to transition away from the current system to a new system and that they would play the role as an integrator [in that effort]," Norman said.

"We're not moving away from Data Action [for the core]. It's only the loan orginiation system that is being replaced."

Norman said the its current loan origination platform is “probably the second biggest system the bank uses for behind its core banking system” and is used by over 200 staff.

It is “critical to the operation of the bank”.

The new system “will add a lot more automation” to loan origination processes.

The changes should see customers experience faster approval times and “make it easy for staff to just focus on providing a great service without having to do a lot of administration tasks in the background.”

The replacement of loan origination system is anticipated for completion by 2024.

Norman said that the bank is examining whether it can use CSS software for other internal use cases.

The loan origination system replacement falls under a broader transformation program that is expected to run through to 2025.

Under this, the bank is planning to upgrade - or is upgrading - systems including a rollout of a new Microsoft Dynamics CRM, along with marketing automation, data analytics and reporting capabilities.

“[The transformation strategy] recognises that the bank is growing really strongly and we have a really clear target market and a very clear vision and a lot of likeminded, socially aware consumers that are joining the bank," Norman said.

“We know that we've got to upgrade our backend systems to meet the expectations of those customers.

"So that's where the focus is.”