Credit Union of Australia today announced it would deploy a new core banking system based on Tata Consultancy Services’ BaNCS platform, which the Indian services provider acquired a handful of years ago with its buyout of Australian software firm Financial Network Services.
India’s largest industrial conglomerate, TCS is an IT services, business solutions and outsourcing organisation which employes over 185,000 IT consultants in 42 countries. One of those unist is TCS Financial Solutions, which develop application solutions for financial insititutions — such as BaNCS. Through the deal announced this morning, CUA will deploy the BaNCS platform over the next two years.
CUA bills itself as Australia’s largest customer owned financial institution, providing banking services to over 400,000 customers all over the country. In a press release issued today, TCS said BaNCS would provide greater flexiblity and integration across CUA, underpinning the bank’s growth strategy. TCS Financial Solutions president NG Subramaniam said his company was happy with the deal.
“TCS’ BaNCS core banking solution will definitely assist to drive new product development and improve efficiencies for CUA,” he said. “We will be utilising our local industry knowledge and extensive global experience to ensure CUA’s new banking platform will be scalable and flexible enough to meet its long-term customer service expectations as well as its back-end operational and data management requirements”.
The move will be a major change for CUA which in 2006, Computerworld reported, moved its 400,000 customer data to Abacus, on an IBM mainframe, after acquiring the Australian National Credit Union.
CUA chief executive officer Chris Whitehead said the investment would be a cornerstone in the future growth of the financial institution. “The implementation of a new core banking system will enhance our business capabilities, enabling us to meet our growth objectives and bring greater efficiencies across the business,” he said.
Whitehead added the new core banking system would ensure better customer service, by enhancing flexibility. “It will also ensure our customers get greater and faster access to innovative products and a consistently good customer experience every time they bank with us,” he said.
”TCS was awarded the contract following a rigorous selection process and we are confident it will be able to deliver a world-class core banking system that will meet our needs and those of our customers for the years ahead,” he said. Financial terms of the deal were not published.
The news comes as other Australian financial services organisations are increasingly examining the potential to migrate off legacy core banking platforms and onto the next generation.
Commonwealth Bank chief information officer Michael Harte several weeks ago shrugged off rival NAB’s core banking overhaul as the “Jetstar” of overhaul projects, in a briefing in which the executive and other CBA leaders repeatedly emphasised that CBA’s own $1.1 billion revamp put it technologically between two and five years ahead of its rivals.
And the Financial Review reported this morning that Westpac would use a deployment at the Bank of Melbourne to trial a migration of its own.
Image credit: Ivan Prole, royalty free
Is TCS related to the Indian Tatas group?
Does this mean some or all of the platforms will be outsourced to India, or kept locally?
Yes, they are related, as I understand it, but there has been no indication that outsourcing to India will take place.
Michael Hartes quote about the NAB implementation of core banking upgrade being “jetstar” like is yet again taken out of context. The way its quoted in this article, much like the opening lines of the CBA presser article, leads a reader to think that the NAB approach is some kind of low cost alternate to a proper implementation. Only later in the original CBA article do you get context of the full quote (The building of a whole new stand alone subsidiary company) and you don’t get any context in this article of the original quote.
You’re right to a point — I probably inserted this paragraph a bit lazily into this article and will word it a bit better next time. My apologies.
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