A Greater Bank experience with core banking in the cloud
Australia's Greater Bank has announced its core banking will be moving to the cloud, partnering with digital and core banking software and services provider Data Action.
A customer-owned bank and mutual financial institution, Greater Bank will migrate from its legacy systems to Data Action's cloud-based core banking platform, with the 95 year-old organisation hoping its new infrastructure will enable it to develop new offerings for customers.
Greater Bank boasts over 260,000 customers in New South Wales and Queensland, and more than AU$7 billion in assets.
The organisation has already successfully transitioned more than 80 customers from its legacy platforms to the Data Action Core Banking solution.
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The mutual bank hopes its core banking upgrade will also help it prepare for open banking.
"Open banking presents a golden opportunity for challengers by making it easier for customers to switch banks and take advantage of their better products and lower rates," Data Action CEO Nicola Burgess said of the partnership, noting her company also hopes the upgrade will help Greater Bank strengthen its position as a leading challenger to the major banks.
"We are really pleased to have signed up such a significant player in the mutual space, it's a major endorsement of our credentials as a leading provider of modern and innovative digital and core banking solutions."
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Open banking, legislated under the first tranche Consumer Data Right, has been touted as opening up competition between banks, utilities, and telecommunications providers, as well as allowing consumers to easily switch between providers.
It will allow individuals to "own" their data by granting them open access to their banking, energy, phone, and internet transactions, in addition to gaining the right to control who can have it and who can use it.
Under the open banking element of the CDR, ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank (CBA), NAB, and Westpac will be required to give consumers greater access to the information they hold on consumers, and the power to require those banks to provide safe and secure access to that information to trusted third parties, by February 2020.
Smaller deposit-taking institutions will have a few months to ready the mandate.
Data Action in August announced it had helped the Queensland Country Credit Union with its core banking merger with Queenslanders Credit Union.
It also partnered with Australian neobank 86 400 to deliver its core banking platform.
86 400 was last month granted a licence to operate as an authorised deposit-taking institution under the Banking Act 1959 by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).
As a result of the licence, Australia's newest bank is gearing up for its launch of transaction and savings accounts, with its app to appear on the Apple Store and Google Play "soon".
The green light from APRA means 86 400 is able to take unlimited customer deposits, after meeting the same regulatory requirements as the Big Four banks. ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, NAB, and Westpac currently hold around 95% of the entire market share in Australia.
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