Teachers Mutual Bank automates KYC across brands

Teachers Mutual Bank Limited is streamlining its compliance obligations by automating customer verification processes for some of its 220,000 members.

Australia’s largest mutual banking group had been doing its Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, required under Australian banking regulations to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, across its retail banking brands manually up until 2023. 

The mutual banking group's head of enterprise applications Anureet Bal told iTnews that it was now using Boomi’s enterprise automation platform for some mandatory checks, speeding up the process of signing up customers for accounts, loans and bank products.

“The [customer] data is pulled directly from our systems into the third party system [that checks compliance], and it's all automated digitally. There's no manual steps, no room for errors," Bal said.

The bank has started using robotic process automation across its IT environment for all four of its retail brands – Teachers Mutual Bank, Health Professionals Bank, Firefighters Mutual Bank and UniBank – which collectively control $11 billion in assets .

It checks customer data against systems able to verify compliance with Australian banking laws.

The information needs to be rechecked every year. Where that used to take the bank days, now it take "minutes or even seconds".

Automating the compliance process had also freed staff up to do other things, Bal said, such as talking to customers to offer better products. 

Bal added that the project helped the bank realise the importance of digitisation and automation integration, and that it had “set the tone” for the bank’s IT future.

However, the modest scale of the business, which employs 600 people, presents a challenge for deploying technology modernisation projects.

“We are running 10 [technology] projects at the moment. Our only constraint is people,” Bal said. 

"That is the only thing [that makes us] feel sometimes we need to slow down or ramp up... because we only to offer the best, not just member, but also staff experience. [KYC automation]  is one of the very successful projects we've run," she said.

Teacher’s Mutual Bank first adopted Boomi's enterprise platform back in 2016 as part of a larger IT environment overhaul. 

The technology acts as a foundation for the bank’s technology stack and integration platform. 

The banking group has been rolling out the project in line with a three-phase schedule. Initially, automated KYC compliance was limited to adult members when it started in 2023. 

It then expanded the rollout to include minors in November 2025 – a cohort uniquely separated from the wider customer base due to its limited credit history and need for a parent or guardian to take responsibility for its accounts.

In 2026, Teachers Mutual Bank plans to finish the third phase: enabling compliance automation for businesses that want to become members or take out loans.

The bank is also shifting from business-owned servers to cloud software. It's hoping to complete the move by February 2026.