Suncorp elevates CIO to lead 'tech and ops'

Suncorp has unveiled a reorganisation that will see its chief information officer Adam Bennett elevated to lead a newly-created 'technology and operations' portfolio.

The insurance and banking provider said the changes affected the insurance portion of its business, which will now be split into consumer, customer and personal injury, and New Zealand.

One of the impacts of this is that certain "operational portfolios" around insurance claims and operations will transition to a 'technology and operations function'.

Adam Bennett, Suncorp's CIO of a bit over three years, has been named group executive of technology and operations.

Digital pays off

In its full-year results, Suncorp touted an explosion in the use of its conversational AI chatbot, which quadrupled the number of customer interactions it handled, “delivering 1.9 million chatbot conversations in FY23”.

In total, the bank said it has deployed “more than 465 [software] robots, automated over 24 million transactions, and saved up to 600,000 hours" during the financial year.

Announcing a full year net profit of $1.15 billion, the bank said it had “successfully delivered its three-year plan to drive growth and efficiencies in the core businesses, while building on the Group’s existing digital and data capability" over the past 12 months.

“Technology, as a key enabler of the FY23 plan, has continued to drive operational transformation, utilising  digitisation, automation, and AI across the value chain," CIO Adam Bennett said in a statement.

"We have empowered our people to think and work differently and this has been a critical component of our success.

“We will continue to simplify and modernise our core tech platforms as we move into our FY24-26 plan, including completing our cloud migration by the end of the year.”

Suncorp's cloud migration, which uses AWS and Microsoft, surpassed 80 percent of workloads migrated, and the bank expects to hit 90 percent by the end of the year, which will bring it closer to exiting its data centres.

Its digital efforts contributed to a fall in operating expenses from $2.78 billion in FY22 to $2.73 billion in FY23, along with optimising distribution networks and business simplification measures.

In its financial results [pdf], the bank did, however, note there were “economy-wide inflationary pressures on wages and technology costs”.

Suncorp said its digital first strategy this year included completing the migration to the Suncorp app, along with improvements in its self-service capabilities.

It also strengthened its digital engagement and origination capabilities, along with launching a “refreshed broker portal”.

“Digital origination continues to drive deposit funding, with over 82 percent of personal at-call accounts originated via digital channels in FY23," Suncorp said.

In its insurance business, Suncorp said, digital transactions represented 68 percent of all sales transactions, and 44 percent of all service transactions, “up from 49 percent and 29 percent respectively at the start of the plan period”.

Claims 

Digital renewals also grew, to “approximately two-thirds” of its mass brand home and motor insurance renewals.

The bank also launched digital capabilities for its Shannons and Terri Scheer brands.

Google’s speech recognition was deployed to support a customer identity and verification voicebot for sales, service, and motor claims contact centres, to cut customer wait times.

Its “Seamless Every Banking” efforts resulted in growth in new transaction and savings accounts being opened digitally, from 72 percent in 2021-2022 to 82 percent in 2022-2023.

Revenue for the full year was just under $18.5 billion.