The second phase of the Bank of Queensland’s digital transformation is now in development, which will impact a broader range of financial products in its Virgin Money Australia digital bank.
The BoQ Group is in the early stages of a five year, $440 million technology overhaul, underpinned by a new core banking system from Temenos. The work is being conducted jointly with Deloitte Digital.
Phase two will bring home loans, loyalty programs and deposit options plus open banking capabilities to the Virgin Money Australia brand.
The first phase, comprising transactional banking products, rolled out late last year in a 'friends and family' debut of the Virgin digital bank.
Speaking at the bank’s half year results, BoQ chief executive George Frazis said the "successful execution of our digital transformation remains a key priority.”
“For the first time, Virgin Money Australia now offers transaction and savings products supported by an innovative loyalty program and an integrated credit card offering delivered through a new native mobile app,” said Frazis.
“Our foundational investment in a cloud-based Temenos core retail banking platform will, in the future, provide the common platform for all BoQ’s retail brands.”
Frazis said Virgin Money Australia digital bank is “critical” to the group's broader strategic transformation, as its successful delivery will aid the transition of other retail brands onto the new cloud-based core.
“It is a market leading technology solution, API-first in design and has been developed as a cloud-based, scalable solution with an evergreen upgrade path providing our customers with the latest in innovation,” Frazis said.
“Leveraging a common data architecture for Virgin Money, BoQ and ME Bank going forward will enable us to have a common core retail banking platform for all three brands.”
BoQ will add ME Bank to its roadmap once the $1.325 billion acquisition is complete at the end of the financial year, pending approvals.
ME Bank is currently undergoing its own transformation as its looks to exit its data centres and shift to the cloud.
Given the acquisition is still underway Frazis said BoQ had no comment on proposed strategies around the continuation of ME Bank's existing transformation efforts.
BoQ said it had completed phase one of the deployment of a Microsoft Azure data platform which plays an important part in the foundation for BoQ's open banking program and enhancing BoQ’s data capabilities.
The bank also built out a broker portal, which provides brokers with online tools for accreditation, training, credit policies and pricing.
BoQ reported $165 million in cash earnings after tax in the first half and $154 million in statutory profits, a 66 percent rise compared to the previous year.
