UBank adopts NAB banking platform

NAB has rolled out its Oracle Fusion core banking platform to online-only subsidiary, UBank, under its six-year NextGen transformation program.

The NextGen program kicked off in 2008 with a view to replacing NAB’s core banking systems and retiring more than 100 legacy applications by 2014.

NAB today said that it had migrated 300,000 UBank customers to the new Oracle platform, after having integrated back-end, core systems and customer-facing websites.

The new platform supported real-time funds processing between UBank accounts, while transfers between NAB and UBank accounts were processed at multiple, set times each day.

It also introduced new customer-facing features such as calculators and funds trackers, and a seven-day processing capability, intended to allow customers to transfer funds on weekends.

Only UBank customers looking to transfer funds into their linked UBank savings accounts would benefit from the capability until "all banks are capable of seven-day processing", a spokesman said.

Gavin Slater, group executive of NAB’s Group Business Services, described the UBank migration as an “important milestone” in its multi-year push towards a more customised service offering.

NAB said it was a third of the way through upgrading and building new networks, data centres and software, while strengthening the resilience and security its systems.

Besides co-developing the new platform with Oracle, the bank said it was “partnering with global IT partners for all major transformation activity in a concerted effort to shift from bespoke technology”.

“Customers benefit from a worldwide community of specialists focused on continuously improving systems,” it said.