NAB outs next-gen platform components

The National Australia Bank will deploy much of the newly launched Oracle Banking Platform by 2014, under its NextGen Transformation Program.

NAB has been looking to replace its core banking systems and retire more than 100 legacy applications since embarking on the transformation program in 2008 (pdf).

It previously stated that it was rolling out a platform based on Oracle Fusion. Today, it revealed that it would adopt the newly launched Oracle Banking Platform.

Oracle Banking Platform, to be unveiled overnight, comprised core banking applications like origination, performance monitoring, pricing, and bundling, and was based on Oracle’s database and middleware technology.

It integrated with other Oracle products including Customer Hub, Accounting Hub, Identity Management, and the existing FLEXCUBE core banking suite.

A NAB spokesman said the bank would adopt Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle Hub, Oracle database and middleware products and the Oracle Banking Platform.

Last month, NAB subsidiary Ubank was the first to move onto the new Oracle Banking Platform. NAB’s spokesman did not disclose when the platform would reach the wider NAB Group.

“This is a packaged solution and the custom built elements will be limited,” the spokesman said, noting that NAB also partnered with vendors such as SAP for general ledger.

“This means we will be more flexible and quicker to respond to changing customer needs in the future, including increases in transaction volumes driven by the easier and faster ways customers can now manage their money.”

Oracle Financial Services group vice president Ashwin Goyal said the Oracle Banking Platform was the product of three years of work and was designed to be deployed in components, so banks could avoid big-bang overhauls.

“We worked with the banks to ensure that what we were building is relevant and validated for large bank deployments,” Goyal told iTnews.

“It’s meant very much for large banking environments’ domestic businesses, and targeted at banks with fairly complex legacy environments that they have cobbled together over the years and [that] drive a lot of inflexibility in how they upgrade today.”

Goyal named the Australian, US and Canadian markets as Oracle’s Banking Platform targets, highlighting the large size of the Australian banking market compared to its peers.

Australian banks also offered “some of the most sophisticated banking products in the world today”, he said, including offset accounts and a customer-centric model.

Goyal highlighted Suncorp, which had adopted Oracle’s CRM system and now was looking at its processes, trade finance and CSC Hogan program, with a view to to replacing the latter with the Oracle Banking Platform.

“Australia is clearly not done in terms or bank transformation,” he said. “In fact, we are in the mid-point of that process.”