BoQ sticks to timeline for new Virgin Money Australia core

The first phase of the Bank of Queensland’s core transformation will go live this week across its Virgin Money Australia business. 

George Franzis, CEO, BoQ.

The new core banking system from Temenos will be rolled out first at Virgin Money Australia and then later across other parts of the bank as part of a five year $440 million core technology overhaul unveiled by the bank in February. 

Speaking at the bank’s annual general meeting on Tuesday, BoQ CEO George Frazis said a 'friends and family' launch of the first phase of the Virgin digital bank will be complete this week. 

Phase one will provide a digital transaction, savings and credit card offering to Virgin Money Australia customers and will form the strategic banking platform for the wider BoQ retail bank. 

“This is a foundational investment for BoQ and is providing a strategic pathway for the retail bank’s migration to the digital platform,” Frazis said.

“The Virgin Digital Bank enables us to build a new digital bank with the benefits of an existing customer base, and the support of the BoQ Group.

"We have established strong execution capability, partnering with Deloitte Digital and cloud-based technology partners to leverage their global expertise.”

Frazis said the “market leading technology solution ... is key to the digital transformation of BoQ and will provide us with the ability to sustainably grow our market share through a highly efficient channel.”  

More broadly, Frazis said the bank has completed six core projects in the digital transformation program, including the migration of its data centres to the cloud to modernise its core infrastructure.

“Despite the many challenges, we’ve remained firmly focused on the execution of our strategy and our digital transformation is on track,” Frazis said. 

“We are overcoming our legacy structural disadvantages through the use of digital channels, partnering and new technology.” 

Frazis said the challenger bank has also delivered improvements in customer experience and reduced the time it takes to approve a mortgage application from five days to one by simplifying processes.