National Australia Bank has passed an important milestone in its tech transformation agenda with the roll out of a new customer relationship management system for its 4500 business bankers.
The deployment of NAB View follows last week’s statements by NAB CEO Andrew Thorburn that the bank was prepared to ‘fight’ to protect its status as Australia’s biggest business bank as it begins the recruitment of one hundred more business bankers.
NAB View, part of the bank's mammoth NextGen core banking programme, is built off the Oracle Customer Hub and combines information from the bank's customer and account information, the wealth management business and its wholesale division. The repository holds more than 12 million customer accounts and approximately 150 million records.
NAB chief information officer David Boyle says: “NAB View is the portal that draws data from the Customer Hub and presents it to bankers with integrated tools. This means that a banker can see a customer’s entire relationship on just one screen - whether they hold traditional NAB personal or business accounts, accounts in UBank, policies with MLC or as a wholesale banking customer."
He says the consolidation of data in one spot enables the bank's agents to be more productive when providing advice to customers.
"NAB View halves the time it takes on average for a business banker to complete an annual review with a customer," he says. "With this extra time up their sleeves, bankers can spend more time focusing on their clients’ future needs.”
In October, National Australia Bank announced plans to write down $297 million in software expenses as the promised benefits of some deployments failed to materialise amid rising costs.
NAB levied the impairment charge following an internal review of its sprawling technology overhaul. While the NextGen programme has delivered securitisation, a new general ledger, funds transfer pricing and the core foundation now operational in direct banking subsidiary UBank, NAB has scaled back its plans for a big bang migration of existing customers in favour of a piecemeal roll out of aspects that will deliver an immediate uplift to new customers.