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Early value derived from core banking overhaul

Suncorp Bank is “smack on schedule” to meet its promised July 1 2016 deadline to deliver its new Oracle-based core banking platform under Project Ignite.

The bank’s chief executive officer John Nesbitt first made the commitment this time last year.

The project involves rationalising the bank’s product set by half, decommissioning 12 legacy systems and re-engineering 580 processes.

The business decided to take a staggered approach to releases up until the go-live date, opting to tackle the least complex areas of the business first.

Personal loan origination was first in line, and Nesbitt today revealed the phase had been completed and the bank had processed more than 3500 personal loan applications since switching the system onto Ignite last November.

The entire branch network was now fully trained to operate on the platform, he said.

“This was a critical first step for the platform, as this low-risk part of our business allowed us to test over two-thirds of the systems across the bank,” Nesbitt told investors today.

“The staggered deployment of this release ensured a controlled rollout, and supported system functionality. It was a low-risk approach which provided lots of learning and validation across the system.”

The new core banking system is allowing Suncorp Bank staff to - in some cases - process personal customer loans in under 20 minutes.

“We’re now settling loans same day. This is a significant change from the pre-Ignite world,” Nesbitt said.

“Previously there were multiple touchpoints across our business in the approval and fulfilment of a personal loan. It took three to five days due to multiple hand offs. Not a very good customer experience.”

Suncorp Bank previously identified home loans, deposits and payments and business loans as next cabs off the rank once personal loan origination was complete.

Home loan origination will be shifted onto the new platform in November, Nesbitt said today, while term deposits and transaction account functionality will become available from the new system in early calender 2016.

“Once the upgrade to the new version 2.4 of the [Oracle] software is completed early next year, legacy systems conversion will start taking place,” Nesbitt said.

“We expect Oracle to deliver the simplified business banking system that we need by late 2015 so we can complete implementation of business banking by June next year.

“We’re very pleased with the progress of this project to date, but I can tell you we’re not complacent by any means.

"By their very nature, technology and change programs require absolutely diligence and vigilance, and we’ve got the right people with the right expertise both internally and externally supporting this program.”