Concerns over Westpac Unite as tech chiefs depart

Westpac has sought to allay concerns about the retirement of two of its most senior technology leaders as its Project Unite technology program enters a key phase.

The bank today revealed that it had completed the planning, investigation and scoping stage of the program, and made a start on delivery.

However, it faced questions about the timing of the exits of group chief information officer Scott Collary and chief technology officer David Walker.

Unite is a program of work critical to Westpac’s operational efficiency that seeks to end system complexity and inefficiencies across the bank's disparate banking platforms caused by decades of merger and acquisition activity.

“With the Unite discovery phase complete, the program is in execution. The program's first large scale customer migration to our wealth management platform Panorama in 1H26 is on track," the bank said in a brief update on Unite to accompany its quarterly results briefing.

The bank also said that it had started a customer trial of Westpac One, the transaction platform for its institutional customers which it recently started offering as a smartphone app.

However, that hasn’t stopped investor concerns about the timing of Walker and Collary’s departures.

Following its quarterly results presentation, Westpac chief financial officer Nathan Goonan told analysts that the pair had “done good things for Westpac” but had “come to the end of their time here”.  

He said that the bank’s chief executive Anthony Miller had been working with Collary on the timing of his departure for an unspecified time.

“He and Anthony have been working through that over a period of time to work out when’s the best time for that to happen,” Goonan said.

Goonan then sought to provide assurances that Unite was in safe hands, pointing to the project’s leader, chief transformation officer Peter Herbert, and the existence of it own dedicated CIO, Paul Bari.

“I think we've also been bringing in talent into the tech team and again, there's a dedicated CIO who isn't David Walker or Scott [Collary] who's been working on the Unite program,” Goonan said.

Bari, the bank’s chief information officer for consumer and Unite, began his career at the Commonwealth Bank in 2005 and has held roles at Barclays Investment Bank, Standard Chartered and Nordic bank, Nordea.

He has been with Westpac since 2021 and in his current role since May last year.

Collary’s career stretches back to the late '80s and covers six banks here, in the US and Canada, including stints at Citibank North America (as CIO Consumer) and ANZ.

He has been with Westpac five years, the first two-and-a-half of those under the title of chief operating officer, but leaves the bank to retire at the end of this year.

The bank confirmed to iTnews that Walker, a former executive director of Singapore’s DBS Bank and head of technology for ANZ, had left the organisation late last month.

Westpac’s transformation, AI and regulatory challenges

If completed successfully, Unite will address complexity and operational cost duplication across the bank’s platform that have accrued since the mid-'90s when the bank entered an acquisitive phase.

It started out small with Westpac scooping up smaller banks before reaching its peak in 2008 when it merged with rival St. George Bank.

In addition to Unite, Westpac’s technology leadership is also tackling the sector-wide scramble to harness AI innovations to reap cost benefits.

At a parliamentary hearing held as part of a review of Australia’s four major banks last November, Miller said that he was cautious about the hype around AI.

However, he also told the committee that its potential impact on Westpac’s operations were “going to be quite profound over time”.

Since then, Westpac has been more vocal in its enthusiasm for the technology.

Last week the bank announced it was rolling Microsoft Copilot to 35,000 employees following a pilot involving 15,000 employees.

Commenting on the deployment in a statement, Westpac’s chief data, digital and AI officer, Andrew McMullan said that AI is a “strategic enabler”.

“By helping our teams work more efficiently and access information faster, AI is removing friction so our people can focus on higher-value work. But technology alone isn’t the answer. We know AI needs to be used responsibly and has the strongest impact when it’s paired with skilled people, strong values and good judgment,” McMullan said.

Westpac declined to comment on how it expected the technology to impact the bank’s workforce requirements when contacted by iTnews last week.

Miller told the parliamentary committee that the bank is still exploring AI’s capability, making it too difficult to commit to a position on how it might impact the bank’s workforce.

“I don’t think we can talk in absolutes that it won’t replace a job,” he told the committee.

However, while the committee focused on potential job cuts at the hearing, Miller explained to committee that, rather than prompting the bank to downsize its workforce, the technology might instead put it in a position to bring on fewer new employees.

Miller gave the committee the example of how the bank had been using an AI product to manage a large volume of engagement across its scam-related contact points.

“Scams are growing, but we are able to accommodate more scam calls with our existing workforce, because the tool helps them be more efficient and deliver a more effective outcome.

“It's meaning I don't have to put more people on in the scams call centre to solve for the work volume, so it's in avoiding the need to put on more roles is at least that example there, and, but it's important that we don't hold ourselves to that situation where we say it won't replace any roles,” Miller said.

iTnews contacted Westpac following its announcement last week seeking comment on whether it expected its Microsoft Copilot rollout to lead to hiring freezes.

“We’re seeing AI help to improve efficiencies right across the organisation and anticipate Copilot will see that continue,” a spokesperson for the bank said.

The spokesperson said that the bank had “nothing further to add”.