Published on the 01/09/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
ANZ – which spends $1.2 billion a year on technology – has signed a five year $450 million deal with IBM which will provide computing platforms to support the bank across the Asia Pacific region…
While the organisations’ links can be traced back over 40 years, there has been a recent ramping up of the relationship.
A 2014 deal saw ANZ named as one of the global pioneers of IBM’s Watson data analytics service which was provided to 400 of its financial planners, allowing them to input customer data and have Watson make tailored recommendations about investment opportunities.
As part of the latest $450 million five year deal IBM will provide its z13 mainframe and POWER8 infrastructure to underpin ANZ’s private cloud environment and access to a raft of software.
A further element of the arrangement is the co-creation by the bank and Big Blue of ANZ’s Innovation Lab. Based on IBM’s Bluemix cloud development platform as a service. The Lab is intended to help developers speed the creation of new services.
Such incubators are a more common feature of the financial services landscape. Both Westpac and Commonwealth Bank have their own innovation labs already (called the Hive and Innovation Lab – yes another one – respectively) which are also intended to spur digital innovation and creativity across the banks.
The bank’s senior executives are regular visitors to the US in order to view first hand Silicon Valley innovation and last month announced that it had set up an international technology and digital business advisory board comprising executives from Twitter, PayPal, Procter & Gamble and Dimension Data.
ANZ has already credited its investment in technology with improving overall productivity. Over the last three years investments in operations and technology has helped decrease the bank’s operations costs from $81,000 per full time employee in 2012, to $77,000 by 2013, and $68,000 in 2014.
Unlike the other three major banks which have either concluded or embarked on major core systems overhauls ANZ has chosen to instead build common technology platforms to drive standardisation, simplification and automation across its Asia Pacific operations.
While that approach can drive out costs, it does not necessarily boost revenues.
The innovation arrangement with IBM, coupled with continued deployment of the Watson system are where new revenues are most likely to emerge. ANZ has also invested in consumer facing systems for its superannuation products, with apps that allow customers to use a single log in to access their bank accounts, superannuation balance, and also to collate lost super by just clicking through a series of options.
