Featured, News - Monday, July 18, 2011 11:44 - 0 Comments

CBA’s dated IT systems forced its hand, says ANZ

ANZ Bank chief information officer Anne Weatherston has rejected claims the bank’s technology platform was falling behind that of rivals, stating billion-dollar IT splurges by the likes of the Commonwealth Bank in recent years were necessary because of a lack of ongoing investment in technology infrastructure throughout the past several decades.

ANZ is the only major bank in Australia to have consistently rejected the need for core banking modernisation over the past few years.

The most high-profile project in the space is CommBank’s gargantuan $1.1 billion core overhaul, conducted over the past three years in coalition with technology partners SAP and Accenture. However, NAB’s own Oracle-based project is currently gaining a full head of steam, and even Westpac has long-term plans to tackle its core platform, using learnings gleaned from its acquisition of St George, which already operates a relatively modern system.

In March, CommBank CIO Michael Harte and other CBA leaders conducted a briefing on their overhaul in which they repeatedly emphasised that the project had put the bank between two and five years ahead of its rivals, allowing real-time transaction functionality and the speedy deployment of new financial products. However, the initiative has also proven costly. The cost of the CommBank overhaul was initially pegged in 2008 at $580 million. Since that stage it has since received several additional cash injections — with its budget rising by $150 million following its acquisition of BankWest, and then by a further $370 million in February this year.

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