Westpac said that more than 800,000 customers with a mobile running Android 10+ will be upgraded to the newest version of its app within the upcoming weeks.
The newly upgraded app includes features like smart search; a digital card; a cards hub; accessibility improvements. The rollout follows the app being introduced to the bank’s 1.7 million iPhone customers earlier in the year. Westpac consumer and business banking chief executive Chris de Bruin commented:
“Mobile has become the channel of choice for customers, with more than 84% of consumer and business digital banking taking place on a smartphone or tablet. We wanted to create an app where we put the customer in control and give them on-demand access to their finances, where and when they want.”
The announcement follows Bendigo and Adelaide Bank emphasizing how it plans to leverage the digital capabilities it gained from its recent acquisition of Melbourne-based fintech Ferocia to scale its mobile-only digital bank platform (Up).
Xavier Shay, the Up CEO, noted that the first cab off the rank would be the launch of a new home loan product next year called Up Home. The product will use data analytics to assist customers with budgeting and will help them to manage repayments and understand what a “healthy” home loan means.
Bendigo Bank and Adelaide Bank CTO Ryan Brosnahan took the opportunity to rattle off the bank’s transformation success by including the number of technology applications it runs by 13% from 653 to 570; commencing the integration of its Delphi and Alliance businesses into the Bendigo products and systems; establishing a multi-cloud capability that enables containerised workloads to be easily moved from Amazon Web Services to Google in a few days.
It was also mentioned that the bank moved 10% of its target state technology apps to the cloud and for new and upgraded apps with implementing more than 80% of these directly to the cloud. What is more, Brosnahan added Bendigo will also roll out a seamless way for customers to authenticate their phones for mobile banking.
“We are focused on digitising the right experiences and interactions with our customers to make these interactions easier and more convenient. This focus on digitisation through an operational excellence lens enables us to remove friction, lower our costs, improve speed, consistency and scale for growth while also being more productive.”
The bank spends AU$165 million during the financial year on growth and transformation spending, substantially higher than the AU$91 million in the prior year. Of that, 24% was invested into foundational technology, 31% for risk and compliance, and 35% towards growth and productivity.
