Who's Who of Financial Services 2011/12 by FST Media

the

Who’s Who

11 12

of financial services

CHIEF PERSPECTIVES CEO insights from BT Financial Group, HSBC, Citibank and BOQ FUTURE ROADMAPS Super regionals, Super budgets, Slimmer margins ON THE MOVE Mobilising Payments

EXCLUSIVE CXO INTERVIEWS Anne Weatherston, ANZ Bob McKinnon, Westpac Adam Bennett, NAB Andy Weir, Bankwest Alex Twigg, UBank Lee Barnett, AMP Neil Whiteing, IAG Peter Mahler, AXA + more

2011/2012 Annual Directory

Plus: Australia’s top product, service and solution providers

The Who’s Who of fINANCIAL seRVICes GeNeRAL MANAGeR, edIToRIAL Angela Horvat

GeNeRAL MANAGeR, sALes John Todd

edIToRIAL dIReCToR Patrice Gibbons

jouRNALIsT

Contents

Melanie Timbrell

CoNTRIBuToRs Michael Araneta Li-May Chew Emilie Ditton Christophe Uzureau

suB edIToR Kimberley Gaskin

sALes dIReCToR Glen Myles

ACCouNT MANAGeRs Emma Charter Toby Wilcock Lily Liu

Driving change through innovation

It’s time to think differently about mobile payment systems

BRAd CooPeR, ChIef eXeCuTIVe, BT fINANCIAL GRouP

PAuLo MAIA, ChIef eXeCuTIVe offICeR, hsBC BANK AusTRALIA A seismic shift in banking technology

CoNfeReNCe PRoduCeRs Magdalen Wong Tom McDonald Kevin Kim

eVeNTs MANAGeR

The next frontier of smart banking

oN The MoVe: MoBILIsING PAYMeNT sYsTeMs

eXeCuTIVe RouNdTABLe

Sense and respond: key leverage points in insurance

RoY GoRI, ChIef eXeCuTIVe offICeR, CITIBANK

The heartbeat driving business forward

Australia’s most influential decision-makers reveal first-hand insights into the trends and evolving disruptions facing the financial services sector

eXeCuTIVe RouNdTABLe

Trends and opportunities in customer centricity

Wendy Simpson

eVeNTs & MedIA CooRdINAToR Courtney Longrigg

ACCouNTs Liz Haywood

dATABAse AdMINIsTRAToR Margarita Tilio

GeNeRAL eNQuIRIes info@fst.net.au

PuBLIsheR FST Media Suite 602, Level 6 30 Alfred Street Milsons Point NSW 2061 Phone: +61 2 9376 3200 Fax: +61 2 9376 3453

dAVId LIddY, MANAGING dIReCToR, BoQ

suPeR ReGIoNALs, suPeR BudGeTs, sLIMMeR MARGINs

The desire for greater customer centricity and the push to consolidate IT and operations will be the key drivers of technical innovation

sWoT ANALYsIs

This exclusive report reveals 10 predictions that insurers need to focus on to revolutionise their business strategies

The Who’s Who of fINANCIAL seRVICes

eXeCuTIVe RouNdTABLe

Accelerating profit growth through innovation

102

dIReCToRY LIsTINGs

A concise catalogue of Australia’s leading product, service and solution providers w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

www.fst.net.au

Where the Market Meets

Financial Services Technology Media where the market meets

Foreword It is my privilege and pleasure to present you the definitive publication for financial services executives. In this edition of The Who’s Who of Financial Services, there is no mistaking the high energy and optimism among our industry leaders. While it comes as no surprise that customer centricity is top of mind, it is the reasoning behind the shift in focus on ‘the channel’ that makes for great reading. You will find that industry chiefs are forthcoming in their aspirations and strategies for the year ahead. There is growing support for channel integration and analytics – particularly with respect to how they are underpinning smarter selling and servicing – and a growing emphasis on how online platforms and their extension onto mobile devices is imperative for business survival. When asked what the next frontier of financial services will look like, social media and cloud computing, consolidation and use-as-you-please continue to dominate views on the way forward. There are also subtle reminders of peer-to-peer lending and the potential of social banking. The need for transformation and business optimisation will continue to gain momentum amid market pressures for financial institutions to uphold tighter margins. The good news is that industry analysts who track IT investment predict fatter technology budgets, courtesy of progressive efforts to modernise core systems. All this, of course, will be played out in the context of a raft of regulatory guidelines designed to protect against consumers’ insatiable appetite for technology consumption. Of all the trends sweeping the industry, the most challenging is the desire to achieve throwback ideals such as fostering trust and recapturing loyalty among a discerning customer base. There has never been a more exhilarating time to be working in financial services, particularly if your portfolio crosses paths with emergent technologies. While the market will continue to be fraught with unpredictable twists and turns, operating ahead of the curve is within reach. On behalf of the team at FST Media, I would like to thank the executives and analysts that agreed to participate in this exclusive publication. A special thanks also to you, our readers. Your patronage is greatly appreciated. May the year ahead be prosperous and fulfilling.

Angela Horvat General Manager, Editorial FST Media

w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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Driving change through innovation brad cooper

The industry today has to find a way to come together and innovate, not letting competition, vested interests or other factors get in the way of creating great outcomes for customers.

who ’s who of fs i

I’m proud that many of BT Financial Group’s greatest achievements lie in constant innovation. Whether we’re redefining great experiences for customers or defining entirely new products, we have a history of defying convention. I think it’s crucial to foster innovation and improvement; and people are at the heart of innovation. We recognise that innovation is easier to stifle than stimulate, so we back our employees and make it easy for them to focus on what matters. We know our employees want to be part of a company that defines the best in its markets and defies conventions – knowing that with that, the financial results will follow. Organisations should be delivering innovation that provides great experiences for customers. At BT Financial Group, we have embedded a customer-centred design culture. The approach brings together cross-functional teams, from IT developers to marketers, who sit with customers and use a set of tools that help us deeply understand their needs. Every interaction counts: we continuously prototype and test with customers so we can see, hear, and feel their feedback and create the solutions they want. Last year’s big ticket items included the delivery of a leading life insurance solution, BT Protection Plans, to the 15,000-strong independent financial adviser market. This was a three-year project that has created a service model which clearly differentiates us from our competitors so we can help solve Australia’s significant underinsurance problem. The innovation behind it was about taking a clean sheet of paper and delivering an end-to-end solution that takes the best parts of product, technology and service as opposed to retro-fitting or consolidating legacy systems. We also launched our award-winning superannuation solution, BT Super for Life, into the St.George and Bank SA bank channels. This product remains the only super fund that integrates super into online banking so customers can see and manage all their finances in one place and all under the same online banking password. This year we look forward to rolling it out to customers of the recently launched Bank of Melbourne in Victoria

so more working Australians can engage and take control of their super. And we continued to deliver on our two platforms’ significant product investment program. In BT Wrap we launched new model portfolio tools, multi-client functionality and numerous desktop enhancements. Over at Asgard we launched enhancements to help advisers manage their clients’ investments more efficiently, an online process for managing clients’ personal tax deductions in super and a custodial shares solution giving advisers the ability to manage their clients’ corporate actions online. We’re yet to truly see the events to trigger investors’ return into the markets; however we know that when markets do turn around investors and advisers will want to respond quickly. Our platforms need to not only help them do this, but do it efficiently. By 2050, some 55 per cent of Australia’s population will be working Australians aged between 20 and 65, with 22 per cent aged 65 years and over. Our retirement savings are critical to the future of our country. We need a strong retirement system that supports more Australians who are living longer. The solution to this challenge is a strong retirement savings system that is highly sustainable. That means it’s customer-oriented, transparent, innovative, and well regulated. We all have a huge role to play by driving change through product innovation. What is most crucial is that the level of innovation and development required to meet the needs of our future retirees means our sector needs to be populated with the best and brightest people. This means a war for talent in financial services and building a fantastic employment proposition on a global scale. The industry today has to find a way to come together and innovate, not letting competition, vested interests or other factors get in the way of creating great outcomes for customers. We have a great chance to be part of driving change which is all about a better life experience and financial future for Australians. Brad Cooper is Chief Executive of BT Financial Group

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A seismic shift in banking technology Paulo Maia

Nowhere is the appetite for new technology stronger than in asia. The growth of new working populations has a strong link with technology.

who ’s who of fs i

As technology makes the world smaller and faster, companies must manage future challenges to stay competitive within an exciting and innovative technological environment for increasingly demanding e-consumers. Technological advances have significantly lowered entry barriers in financial services by allowing non-traditional competitors to offer services without needing a physical branch network. Consequently the way banks and their customers interact has been transformed. Customers now obtain information about products and services immediately, compare prices instantly and apply for new products from their computers. To be successful in this e-world, banks must provide and effectively manage a wide range of high-quality, fast and secure online services. HSBC customers are mainly internationallyminded and they want banking access whenever and wherever they are. Our customers access banking services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in person, over the phone and online. But this brings expectations: they need immediate responses to their requests, are time sensitive and are always looking for the next user-friendly big thing online. They are used to instant gratification and they can be a fickle group. At the other end of the spectrum, we have customers who want to discuss their financial requirements face-to-face in a branch. Given the diversity of customers and their needs, we must deliver competitive products through multiple channels. Banking has become more responsive to customers’ needs, and HSBC is continuously becoming more customercentric, offering tailored services to all types of customers. For example, HSBC Premier is a global banking service for affluent individuals, available in 43 countries. It enables customers to see on one screen any HSBC account held in other countries, to transfer funds between them in a click, and to get preferential rates on a range of products. Customers also have a relationship manager who provides more high-touch support, including day-to-day banking needs or assistance with offshore

financial products. Technology is increasingly becoming a facilitator here too – HSBC will shortly introduce internet video conferencing so customers can speak with their relationship managers face-to-face wherever they are. Similarly, as more companies reconcile their local and international banking arrangements and look for solutions to complex global cash management needs, HSBCnet delivers by providing a range of products and services on a single global platform. HSBCnet provides real time online access to cash management, global markets, research, securities, trade and commercial banking services presented in a format that can be tailored to the needs of individual business customers. It also gives customers the convenience of managing their companies’ finance real-time from anywhere. Nowhere is the appetite for new technology stronger than in Asia. The growth of new working populations has a strong link with technology. Younger populations in Malaysia, Indonesia and India have a strong and instinctive affinity with technology and, as experienced users of online collaborative networks and mobile devices, they will have high expectations of what can be delivered via banking interaction in these areas. Asian multinationals are also driving economic growth with aggressive global expansion strategies, implemented at an unprecedented pace. Having evolved rapidly in recent years, these companies are heavy and innovative users of technology and therefore have very high expectations of what technology they need to support their businesses, both in terms of geographic expansion and efficiency. As Asian corporations expand both regionally and globally, so will their expectations of their bank’s network coverage. Asia’s growth is an exceptional opportunity: we are witnessing a seismic shift in banking technology, which will generate opportunities for new products and services. But it will only be accessible to banks that are capable of changing both their thinking and their business models. Paulo Maia is the Chief Executive Officer of HSBC Bank Australia

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The next frontier of smart banking Roy GoRi

Beyond the digital environment, we’re also using technology to develop new ways to engage with our customers in the physical world.

who ’s who of fs i

Citibank is harnessing technology to serve digitally-savvy consumers in ways they have never seen before. As consumers around the world adopt new and exciting technologies, being at the forefront of innovation is important to remaining relevant, particularly in the increasingly competitive financial services environment. Citibank Australia holds a unique position in the marketplace in that we specifically target a segment of customers that we define as affluent or aspiring affluent with a global mindset. We aim to create specific products to appeal to this segment, and also leverage specific channels to communicate to our customer base in the most effective way. Technology is a critical part of this strategy. Citibank’s annual investment in technology is significant. We use our global network to develop technologies in different countries which are then rolled out around the world. This approach gives us great economies of scale and the ability to stay at the forefront of banking technology. In 2008, Citibank’s New York-based global direct banking team began a partnership with Australia’s technology team to deliver a new vision in online and mobile banking. Together, the teams developed a state-of-the-art online banking platform with a refreshed look and improved navigation to allow customers to fulfil all of their financial decision-making and transact quickly, easily and with a high level of security. New features include: a multiple payments capability for scheduling all monthly payments in one step; a calendar to view all account activity for the month ahead; and a personalised budgeting tool. Now more than 50 per cent of Citibank customers are enrolled to use our online banking portal, with an increasing number using the service at least four times per month. It was launched in Australia first and now has been rolled out in many Citibank countries around the world. The natural extension of the online platform was mobile banking, so in 2010 we launched a market-leading mobile

banking service in Australia. It has all the functionality of our internet banking platform, including a global view of all accounts, which enables customers to view all Citibank accounts held across the world with one simple log-on and fee-free transfers between accounts. Citibank is the only bank to offer this service. Citibank was also the first in the Australian market to launch a merchant-based GPS locator service for our credit card customers to use with their smartphones. It enables customers to find around 6,000 special offers for dining, sport, shopping and travel from our Citibank World Privileges program, both here in Australia and throughout 16 countries in Asia. These innovations are just the beginning. Beyond the digital environment, we’re also using technology to develop new ways to engage with our customers in the physical world. Earlier this year, we opened two branches in Camberwell, Victoria and Joondalup, Western Australia which feature ‘smart banking’ technology developed by Citibank in Japan. These branches provide customers with a distinctly different style of customer servicing with unique tools to better tailor their own banking experience. The technologies offered enable customers to work side-by-side with staff at a ‘Citi work bench’ – a private touch panel information system. They can view information and financial data on interactive media walls or find customised, personal finance solutions using other touch-screen devices. We have plans to roll-out the entire ‘smart banking’ experience in a flagship branch in one of Australia’s capital cities. But these technologies are merely the tip of the iceberg. We see our investment in digital banking as an investment in our customer relationships, and part of our commitment to provide banking services which are global, mobile, convenient, cost-efficient and safe. Roy Gori is the Chief Executive Officer of Citibank

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o pi n i on

The heartbeat driving business forward DaviD LiDDy

There was a real opportunity to go against the grain, to open branches, and to capitalise on the growing customer disenchantment with banks that were pushing them out of branches and into electronic channels.

who ’s who of fs i

Famous management theorist Peter F Drucker once said: “The enterprise that does not innovate inevitably ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present… the decline will be fast.” He really hit the nail on the head there. This is my 10th year at BOQ and in that time we have seen a huge amount of change in the industry, and the pace of change shows no signs of abating. If anything, it’s speeding up. Regulation has had a huge impact on the way we do business and the availability of credit, and the global financial crisis (GFC) has changed forever the pricing of risk. Consolidation, particularly during the GFC, has reduced the number of regional banks to three and funding costs have increased out of sight. But it’s not all negative. Change is often the spark for innovation – or, as a very smart person once said – necessity is the mother of invention, and so it has been for BOQ. In the last few years we have been looking at what we can offer our customers that our competitors can’t, in terms of product, and in recent months we have rolled out a pipeline of new products that we believe make us a strong competitor. But innovation is not new to BOQ. In fact, the core of our bank, our branch network, is based on one of the most innovative distribution models I’ve ever seen in my 40 plus years in banking – that network was introduced back in 2001, in an entirely different banking landscape. Ten years ago, here in Australia, the banks were still closing branches. But over in the US, the branch was making a major comeback as a retail outlet and a viable sales channel. In fact, US banks were opening hundreds of new branches across the country, expanding their footprint and opening themselves up to literally millions of new customers. Having worked and studied the banking system in the US, I saw an opportunity here. There was a real opportunity to go against the grain, to open branches, and to capitalise on the growing customer disenchantment with banks that were pushing them out of branches and into electronic sales channels harder and faster than they were prepared for. The only major obstacle we faced was cost. How could we pay for a fast branch roll-out

while also continuing to reduce our cost-toincome? The answer was the owner-managed branch, or OMB. We turned BOQ’s tired-old agency model into a thriving, value-driving machine by changing it into a franchise model, and attracting the very best banking entrepreneurs to come on board. So not only did we have a rapidly expanding branch footprint to welcome customers into and a growing disenchantment with the big banks, we were also building a network of savvy bankers who were also small business people. And this really goes to the heart of the success of the OMB Model. Because the success of our owner-managers is intrinsically linked to the success of their branch, they will go out of their way to make every customer experience a good one. They know referrals drive their business, so they want every single customer to be a walking, talking BOQ ambassador. This means they will take calls on their mobile phones out of hours, extend branch opening hours, jump in the car to drive documents to a customer, and, in a couple of cases, open the branch on a Sunday to help a customer in dire need or run foreign currency to a customer’s business address so they can head off overseas. These stories then become the heartbeat that drives our business forward. We have obviously made some mistakes along the way, but we have learnt from these mistakes and have improved the way we manage our OMB network. And the results really do speak for themselves. We continue to outperform the market in both lending and deposits, which is a significant achievement and is due in large part to our unique OMB model. At the same time we were rolling out new branches, we were also rolling out new business banking centres, which have seen us return face-to-face banking to people running small- and medium-sized business. So, innovation has driven our success, our resurgence as a company, and our emergence as a confident, stand-alone regional bank in one of the country’s most competitive industries. David Liddy is the Managing Director of BOQ

C o - S ponSo r e d a r t i Cle

Keeping customer and corporate information under control The financial services industry, with its vast repositories of sensitive customer and corporate data, can often be a prime focus for cyber criminals. Online criminal networks are developing more sophisticated malware to access corporate systems and steal this data. In 2010, Symantec encountered more than 286 million unique variants of malware1 and recorded more than 3 billion attacks.2 Criminals are also using elaborate social engineering techniques to secure the trust of individuals and steal personal and corporate information for financial gain. They are also targeting the rich repository of information held on social media networks to steal identities. This is the picture painted by the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Volume 16, published in April 2011, which uses the extensive Symantec Global Intelligence Network and other Symantec sources to obtain up-to-date and accurate information about the state of Internet security. However, many businesses in the financial services sector now use detailed policies and resilient systems to guard against these threats. In addition, IT and business managers in financial services companies understand the need to keep their electronic defences up to date. At Symantec, we believe several trends should prompt financial services companies to review their approach to information security, namely: the increasing popularity of mobile devices; the move by organisations to supplement email with more advanced collaboration tools; growing demand from individuals to access corporate data and resources using personal devices; and the move to virtual or cloud computing.

who ’s who of fs i

Employees are increasingly asking financial services organisations to bring their own devices from home and use them to access the corporate network. This is known as ‘BYO computing’, or the ‘consumerisation of IT’. On 29 March 2011, The Australian newspaper reported that a financial services firm would allow thousands of its staff to access its network using their own notebooks, smartphones and tablet computers. Increasingly, employees want to work where and when it suits them, rather than only being able to access corporate systems during business hours. For example, a senior executive at a conference in Italy may want to access a monthly financial report from a smartphone at 2am Sydney time on a Sunday.

The combination of these trends has serious implications for financial services organisations. They can no longer maintain the traditional perimeter-style defences around their corporate networks. At the same time, customers are increasingly using notebooks, tablets and smartphones to check accounts, make payments and transfer funds. This greater interest in mobile devices has attracted attention from security researchers – and criminals. The number of known mobile operating system vulnerabilities grew from 115 in 2009 to 163 in 2010.3 There are

growing indications of malware targeting the Apple iPhone4 and the increasingly popular Android mobile device operating system5. We expect to see a sharp rise in the number and sophistication of threats targeting mobile devices in coming years. Businesses are also increasingly using collaboration tools and bringing social media into the mix as part of strategies to improve communications with customers and their own employees. At the back end, financial services organisations are using virtualisation and cloud computing to provide on-demand access to applications and data centre resources. The combination of these trends has serious implications for financial services organisations. They can no longer maintain the traditional perimeter-style defences around their corporate networks. This new information landscape means organisations should instead focus on protecting information and identities. This requires five key enablers: identity security, device security, information protection, context and relevance, and cloud computing. Identity security allows for simple and secure access to information from anywhere. Customers and staff can connect to services without fear of identity theft or misuse. At the same time, financial services organisations can be confident someone connecting to their systems is who they say they are. Symantec recognises that the old-fashioned approach of maintaining device security using signatures cannot keep up with the creators of malicious software. In 2009, we identified more than 2.9 million malicious code signatures, up from 1.6 million in

C o - S ponSo r e d a r t i Cle

2008. That is why we have introduced a new approach that blocks undiscovered threats as well as known ones. Information protection means only the right people can access information, and sensitive information stays where it should. By combining data loss prevention, encryption and business continuity technologies, financial services organisations can dictate how sensitive information is used and shared. They can stop data falling into the wrong hands and recover quickly from a disaster or attack. Like all businesses, financial services organisations are drowning in data. Context and relevance is about getting the right information to the right person at the right time. By understanding who is asking for information and what will meet their needs, financial services organisations can respond quickly to market trends and keep an edge over competitors. Cloud computing is about creating an IT architecture that allows organisations to access computing power, applications and storage on demand. By protecting information and identities wherever they reside, financial services businesses can confidently use a variety of cloud computing models – a cloud hosted by a third party, a purely on-site datacentre cloud or a hybrid of the two. Symantec Internet Threat Security Report, Volume 16, Published April 2011, page 6 (https://www4.symantec.com/mktginfo/ downloads/21182883_GA_REPORT_ISTR_Main-Report_04-11_HIRES.pdf) 2 ibid, page 4 3 ibid, page 6 4 www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/beware-attackers-could-usenew-iphone-4-jailbreak-code-carry-out-malicious-attacks; www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/yet-another-iphone-worm; 5 www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/android-threat-tacklespiracy-using-austere-justice-measures; www.symantec.com/ connect/blogs/android-threats-getting-steamy; www.symantec. com/connect/blogs/androidgeinimi-branching-out-japaneseapplications 1

By combining data loss prevention, encryption and business continuity technologies, financial services organisations can dictate how sensitive information is used and shared. They can stop data falling into the wrong hands and recover quickly from a disaster or attack. As the pace of change increases, business and IT managers have even less time to reposition their organisations to thrive in this new environment. Symantec works proactively with organisations to help them meet this challenging security landscape.

Discover, monitor and protect confidential data It is time for organisations to rethink security. The traditional approach of placing perimeters around IT networks does not address today’s data security challenges. Symantec can reduce risk, ensure compliance and protect your organisation’s customers, brand and intellectual property. Symantec Data Loss Prevention discovers, monitors and protects confidential data wherever it is stored or used. It comprehensively covers data across endpoints, networks, and storage systems and operates even when users are off the corporate network. w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

a n a lys is // B a n k i n g

who â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s who of fs i

B a n k ing // a n a lys is

The desire for greater customer centricity and the push to consolidate iT and operations will be the key drivers of technical innovation, say Michael Araneta and Emilie Ditton in this exclusive report.

Future Roadmaps Super regionals Super budgets Slimmer margins

In Australia the impact of the economic crisis on the banking industry has been less significant than in other locations across the region, but we have still seen a shift in focus. Australian banks are delivering strong performances, and competition from smaller players in the market is limited as a consequence of significant mergers and acquisitions activity over the last few years. Australian banks have shifted to a focus on innovation in the channel, and a focus on the customer, in part enabled by major core banking upgrades by a number of the major banks. Across the region in general, the focus post-crisis has also altered. For example, we see mid-size institutions fighting back against all the more dominant large institutions, lending targets that are moderating from the aggressive numbers set in 2010, and an industry suddenly concerned about where it generates fee income. Despite these areas of changing focus postcrisis, in 2011-12 we will see a continuance of trends that became apparent in the postcrisis year of 2010: we will see the continued emergence of super-regionals; ever-tightening margins; and growing technology budgets. Our tracking activity across markets in the Asia Pacific point to several notable trends in the year ahead and have highlighted the corresponding areas of strategic IT initiatives that are the focus for banks within the Asia Pacific region. w ho â&#x20AC;&#x2122; s w ho o f fs i

a n a lys is // B a n k i n g

Australian BFSI ICT Market (A$M)

BFSI ICT Market

2011

2012

2013

2014

2011-2014 CAGR (%)

10,074 46,328

10,526 47,826

10,968 49,657

11,481 51,603

4.7 3.8

Source: IDC

Megatrends

1. Super-regionals continue to emerge In several reports last year we discussed the emergence of what we called super-regional institutions: institutions that stepped up their acquisitive activities in several markets in the region and in a short period of time created their own regional franchise. A key example of a major super regional strategy from an Australian bank in the Asia Pacific market is ANZ Banking Group (ANZ). ANZ is expanding its regional footprint by moving into markets such as China, Japan and Indonesia. There are 10 or so superregionals that made their mark in 2010; these banks will continue to build traction in their markets of choice in 2011-12. Other than Australia, super-regional stories will emerge in Indonesia and China. Banks in other countries, specifically Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines, will have to address why their super-regional strategies have been slow in the making. 2. The roadmap to one ASEAN A new angle to the super-regional story is the industry’s increasingly serious consideration of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which will, if everything happens as planned, come to fruition by 2015. Among other things, the AEC is expected to liberalise financial services in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, allowing more and newer players to compete with domestic incumbents. The region’s banks will have to seriously consider the prospects of a 700 million-strong market and anticipate the unique trade finance and corporate banking opportunities therein. Alongside the creation of the AEC is the continued expansion of trade and economic cooperation with ASEAN partners like China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand

who ’s who of fs i

and India — effectively made up of the major economies of the Asia Pacific. Furthermore, banks will continue to urge the region’s central banks to establish a regional banking framework to support this economic integration and to standardise financial regulation. There will be a push to allow more centralisation of IT and operations, enabling organisations to reap the benefits of technological innovations like cloud computing. 3. Interest rates trending up In Australia, the post-crisis recovery has necessitated a delicate balancing act between sections of the economy impacted by the mining sector (Queensland and Western Australia in particular), the other states where GDP growth is flatter but wealth creation resulting from the rising housing market is paramount. Across the region banks are facing a similar requirement to balance as a consequence of the recovery,

Australian BFSI ICT Market, 2011 (A$M)

17%

15% 68%

Banking Source: IDC

Financial services

Insurance

which is fragile and uneven and necessitates a balancing act as interest rates are brought up from record low levels. In general, the industry expects interest rate increases to be phased throughout 2011-12, and banks will have to carefully calibrate their response on both their deposit and lending rates while considering impact to margins, reaction from a wary public, and what the rest of their peers are doing. 4. The race for cheap deposits continues Elsewhere, banks are continuing to focus on acquiring the salary deposit account as the most important customer engagement driving ongoing customer loyalty and increasing revenue per customer. Three trends serve to make funding even tighter for banks in 2011-12 – an increasing interest rate environment that has already led to higher costs in the wholesale market; more aggressive competition domestically for customer deposits; and more stringent regulation governing reserve ratios and liquidity coverage. Banks with significant CASA bases (ratio of deposits in the form of Current Account and Savings Account to the total deposits) continue to hold significant competitive advantage. The battle for retail deposits, frenetically fought in 2010, will persist in the coming year. 5. Loan growth targets back to normal While a few markets like Singapore and Indonesia will see their banks accelerate lending even further, we expect banks in general to moderate their loan growth targets in 2011-12. This is true in the Australia market, as well as other markets across the Asia Pacific. This scaling back does not portend lackluster lending activity in the next 12 months but rather underscores how exceptional past years have been, in terms of credit provisioning, huge stimulus programs, and hyper growth in bank lending. In some cases, this scaling back is also crucial to prevent overheating. In China, the government will likely further push up reserve ratios and more strictly enforce that loan growth targets are not breached. These measures will accompany a continued increase in interest rates that are meant to prevent overheating of the

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economy. Meanwhile, Indian banks are scaling down previous loan growth targets as they are not seeing robust demand for loans outside of the infrastructure sector – a sector boosted by huge government infrastructure programs. 6. Disruption in fee income A rethink of banks’ fee income strategies is needed, in light of how current sources of fee revenue are being eliminated, capped or put under question. This is not specific to Australia or the Asia Pacific region; caps in debit card merchant fees (thanks to the Dodd-Frank Act) and the continued effort by Elizabeth Warren’s Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection against the ‘tricks and traps’ of the US banking industry, all point to how this is indeed an industry-wide undertaking. In Australia, new measures to cut exit fees on mortgages (although this was more to foster competition) and deposit account transaction fees (also seen in New Zealand) are already being implemented. In the Philippines, banks will be able to take advantage of the new one-day central clearing system but will stand to lose a key source of fee income in returned checks and draws on insufficient funds. We believe that banks will offset fee revenue they will not be able to see out of their retail business by expanding fee generation from commercial and corporate banking, investigating opportunities not only in trade finance and transaction banking but also in advisory and consulting services. Other institutions will be looking at entirely new business models. Debt recovery services and cloud computing provisioning are two of the most frequently cited alternatives. 7. Mid-size institutions fight back The highest loan growth targets that we are seeing at the onset of 2011-12 come from ambitious mid-size banks in several markets across the region. To some extent, they continue a trend we saw in 2010 of mid-size players competing aggressively in the deposits business, most of the time to the detriment of margins. This aggressive drive is also seen in IT plans – if one were to look at the growth in bank IT spending for 2011-12, most of the highest growth rates would come from

tier two players. These institutions will be spending on technology capabilities that will allow them to handle greater transaction throughput, bring on board many new customers, and support the expansion of their product offerings. Their aggressive spending plans belie a conviction that their best chance to make it to the big leagues is during this period of economic revival. 8. All eyes on China Although Non-Performing Loan (NPL) ratios of most economies in the Asia Pacific region have been heading lower in recent months, China’s outstanding NPLs are expected to spike as loans reach maturity. The true state of NPLs in the mainland, obscured by high total loan bases and inconsistent definitions of what actually constitutes an NPL, will be made more apparent in the coming year. Although China’s economy will continue to expand due to increasing domestic demand, warnings have been raised specifically on the property sector. Alarmingly, hedge fund managers who have successfully profited from the US subprime market and European debt crises have positioned themselves to gain from this growing bubble. Substantial risks in the property sector have also been raised in Australia – where the big four Australian banks are uncomfortably exposed to the real estate market with more than 60 per cent of their total Australian loans made up of mortgages – and many other markets that saw great growth in a short period of time. Banks and technology vendors alike will have to make sense of the macro-level drivers of the 2011-12 scenario, ultimately deciding which strategies and investment priorities of the past years need to be intensified and which need to be discarded in light of a drastically different marketplace. The megatrends for 2011-12 will directly impact the nature and type of IT investments banks choose to make, and how these investments are prioritised. Across the Asia Pacific region the technology budgets of banks are growing, and with this banks are placing renewed confidence in the opportunity of successful IT implementations and upgrades. IT investments in the Asia

institutions will be looking at entirely new business models. Debt recovery services and cloud computing provisioning are two of the most frequently cited alternatives.

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a n a lys is // B a n k i n g

Pacific region are primarily focused around delivering improvements in responsiveness to customers and driving effective customer data management, and capabilities and innovations in the channels. These priorities are driven by the desire to manage costs down while maintaining and driving their own competitive advantage to fare better against other banks in their market. IDC’s activities across the Asia Pacific region in tracking IT investment priorities among the banking industry point to the following:

Top 10 iT initiatives

Amid various initiatives to bring online more channels... the strategy taken by banks should be focused on delivering a seamless cross-channel experience for customers, rather than being biased towards one channel in particular.

1. Customer data management: The highest IT priority looking across the Asia Pacific region is the desire to deliver greater customer centricity. The path to this is managing a single view of the customer throughout the organisation. Customer data management brings together disciplines of business intelligence, customer analytics, customer relationship management, customer data integration and master data management with the end goal of attaining an integrated, enterprise-wide view of each customer. A critical part of successful customer data management is ensuring the quality and reliability of customer information throughout the information lifecycle. Effective management of the data infrastructure itself will be crucial, necessitating attention to the areas of data warehousing, storage, and security.

2. Channels: The second part of delivering greater customer centricity is to improve the customer experience in the channels. Banks across the Asia Pacific region and in Australia, for example, are making investments and driving innovation in the channel. Investments in online and mobile channels are of particular priority, enabling customers to engage with banks in the way that they find most convenient. Amid various initiatives to bring online more channels (in both quantity and type), the strategy taken by banks should be focused on delivering a seamless cross-channel experience for customers, rather than being biased towards one channel in particular. This strategy extends to the remaking of the importance of the branch as a channel to the customer. A key example of the reignited focus on the branch as a channel is the advertising campaign of ANZ branches as approachable, customer-friendly environments. 3. Risk management and compliance: Risk management compliance will continue to be a key area of focus in 2011-12. Risk management executives place concerted priorities on two main areas, the first of which is to focus on programs that made risk management the top strategic initiative in 2010 and equip themselves in filling up outstanding gaps within their risks management capabilities. Among these include credit risk models, regulatory compliance and security. The second task is to keep abreast of new developments, which include new regulatory regimes such as Basel III. Chief risk officers also need to fully appreciate the advent of technologies – such as cloud computing and virtualisation, social networking tools, and the launching of banking applications on mobile platforms – that can transform the banking business and manage the corresponding newly-minted risk implications pertaining to technology innovations. 4. Innovation in IT delivery: Cloud computing offers the possibility of reducing capital investment and enabling the capability of managing costs up and down as requirements change. Across the Asia Pacific region cloud computing

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implementations in banking are primarily focused in applications such as email, UC and CRM, however regardless of whether banks take on cloud computing, or utility processing, or ‘new outsourcing’, the IT delivery model should align with the pay-as-you-go, use-as-you-please, and results-based principles that have gained ground in the region. 5. Core banking: The focus on core banking is particularly high in Australia where Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and National Australia Bank (NAB) are undertaking major core banking upgrades, and where smaller institutions are looking to improve their own core systems as well. Looking more generally across the Asia Pacific region, the number of core banking deals will increase slightly in 2011-12, reversing the years-long trend of declines. Taking cues from recent core banking strategies out of Australia, a more modular and component-based approach to core banking renewal has gained favor, allowing banks to address business processor data-related gaps within and around the core system, before tackling the core engine itself. Consequently, core banking renewal has become akin to business process reengineering projects. 6. IT governance: Effective IT governance helps ensure that the institutions’ technology directions are on track to support business goals, sustain strategies and objectives, and oversee IT resource management. CXOs also understand that the lack of governance would have a contributory role toward the failure of IT projects, an especially relevant consideration given the high profile outages in major banks of late. 7. IT security and fraud management: IT security and fraud management is a major and increasing area of focus for banks across the Asia Pacific region. The greatest driver for banks in IT security will be fraud management. In tandem with the upsurge in economic activity, the region has been witnessing increased incidences of identity theft and internal fraud. The new models of IT delivery

such as cloud computing, utility processing, offshoring and super-regional hubbing will also necessitate new strategies to address data privacy and data integrity issues. 8. Trade and cash management: Across the Asia Pacific region corporate behavioral patterns and expectations of their banking relationships have changed dramatically in recent years, shaped by shifting intraregional trade flows. Asian corporates have begun to assess their financial needs in a more holistic manner, with a view to optimising their banking provider footprint, and gaining visibility over risk exposures on a global basis. The imminent creation of the ASEAN Economic Community will shape requirements as well. Unfortunately, solution providers (bank and non-bank) might have remained product-centric rather than transform themselves to be customer-centric. 9. Banking 2.0 and payment innovation: Web 2.0 has in a short period of time become a credible initiative for banks. The more dynamic institutions have set up innovation centers to roll out their bank’s Bank 2.0 strategies. Innovation has extended to payments, broadly classified into two categories: innovative enhancements and disruptive innovation. These innovations will hopefully help banks access much-needed new sources of fee income. 10. Customer-centric business process reengineering: Part of delivering to the requirements of the customer and thereby delivering customer centricity will be manifested in how banks strive to design business processes that meet the changing requirements of the customer. Processes and sub-processes are being analysed for turnaround time, time to completion, and first-time right, all to ensure good customer experience. There is also growing insistence from customers that their requirements be reflected in products and services on offer – and right away.

Michael Araneta is an Associate Research and Consulting Director at IDC Financial Insights Asia Pacific and Emilie Ditton is a Senior Market Analyst at IDC Australia.

Market Forecast: Emerging Trends in Banking Customer centricity is clearly a main theme for 2011-12. Institutions will compete to be truly customercentric – or at least perceived to be so. The creation of new roles within the organisation specifically to foster customer centricity will also be encouraged, as they can speed up the bank’s effort to create points of differentiation Regulation: Anticipate a slew of regulatory guidelines on the management of IT resources as the industry takes to new models of IT consumption. Risk management continues to be a top initiative despite better times New technology: The executive suite should be aware of many new social and technology phenomena that can potentially transform the banking experience. Ultimately banks should be able to participate in the current cycle of innovation Service failures and operational outages are likely to increase in frequency in 2011-12 as the banking industry pursues many ambitious and innovative projects, and all at the same time Super-regional banks: They will define new ways of rolling out projects as core banking, outsourcing, cloud computing and Banking 2.0 Emerging models: The pay-as-yougo, use-as-you-please, and resultsbased principles of IT spending have truly gained ground. Banks will be ‘all ears’ for the opportunities these propositions offer.

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C o - s ponso R E d a R T i ClE

Make it simple: Infosys gets the view from industry leaders An increasingly complex world Australian banks are leading the global pack in the volume, scale and complexity of the technology work they have undertaken recently. From mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to core banking transformation and next generation delivery channels, the pace – and consequent complexity – is daunting.

Andrew Groth, Infosys

It is not surprising, then, that one of the key priorities for many financial institutions today is the quest for greater simplicity. Industry research indicates that companies with streamlined systems and processes grow 1.7 times faster than their more complex counterparts. Simplicity can be a powerful tool for liberating capital, talent and management attention to focus on innovative customer-facing operations. Market growth and meeting competitive threats are also key advantages. In November 2010 Infosys financial services General Manager Andrew Groth asked a group of industry leaders how they are measuring and driving simplicity in their organisations.

George Lawson, Head of Strategy for Product and Operations, Westpac Banking Group (Westpac) For Westpac, simplicity starts with placing the customer at the centre of everything we do. Gail Kelly is very clear that customer centricity is the absolute focus of our organisation. To be customer centric you need to design processes from the customer’s perspective and break away from a siloed approach to delivery. To understand the customer’s perspective Westpac has undertaken extensive research into how our customers use and interact with our products. These observations and insights are used to simplify our systems and processes – everything from product origination to the customer experience when he or she walks into a bank branch.

Stuart Sayers, Managing Director, E*Trade We’ve won some awards for innovation but we don’t set out to be innovative, we just talk to customers and we talk to them a lot. Strong feedback from customers is the key driver behind the way we simplify our processes. An example: we’re obviously owned by ANZ Banking Group (ANZ), and ANZ customers who are also E*Trade customers didn’t like the fact that they had to log in twice. So we did a little bit of work on this and it took about two months to create a seamless log on between E*Trade and internet banking. It was a small project, it cost a couple of hundred grand, but it increased the volume of customers logging onto E*Trade from ANZ by a factor of seven. And our trading activity went up 60 per cent when the rest of the market went up 20 per cent. So it was a great example of simple problem, simple solution – big impact.

Lorna Johnson, General Manager of Strategy, National Australia Bank We’ve been looking at a number of metrics around simplicity. For example, we found that in some parts of the bank we may have had an small increase in product numbers over the last ten years, but the processes and systems around those products have grown exponentially. Therefore it’s important to review the processes to look at how we can simplify our processes to improve customer experience. We also look at internal measures of our own staff satisfaction in simplification as well.

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We’ve observed that focus on simplicity creates capacity for new growth, as well as convenience and affinity. Andrew Groth Infosys Australia & New Zealand

C o - s ponso R E d a R T i ClE

Andrew Moore, St George Bank

Lorna Johnson, National Australia Bank

Vicky Doyle, Suncorp, George Lawson, Westpac and Stuart Sayers, E*Trade

Vicky Doyle, Executive General Manager, Superannuation and Investments, Suncorp We do an annual survey that tests attitudes towards superannuation. The results say that one in two Australians find super too complicated. The key issue is simplicity: respondents reflect how complex it is, how they don’t understand it, how convoluted it is, and how the processes are just so painful. So we’re doing quite a bit of work around simplicity, starting with re-engineering back office processes. You’ve got to spend time around the systems and migrations behind it so you can get the costs out of the back. We can now spend every dollar we have on the front and what actually matters to the customer.

Andrew Moore, Chief Operating Officer, St George Bank There is considerable innovation occurring in customer-centred design, but you can do all of that work and still run into the massive roadblock of how you actually get the whole organisation lined up to deliver. I’m talking about operations, HR, IT, marketing and sales – all of the different parts of the business need to line up behind it, and that is one of the big challenges of simplification. If you can’t actually get everyone to stop working on the things which don’t line up, with the fundamental branded value proposition, then you will incur significant cost in which does not really assist you in getting to the end goal. That’s not a challenge of innovation – thinking and keeping up with competitors – it really is the challenge of saying, we know exactly what we want to do, how do we now just line everything up behind it? You don’t need to have the best ideas, you just need to be consistently delivering against them.

Simplifying the login process increased the volume of customers by a factor of seven. Stuart Sayers, Managing Director, E*Trade

Andrew Groth, General Manager, Financial Services, Infosys Australia & New Zealand Our research shows that one of the things winning organisations do better than others is to simplify – whether simplifying their own organisational structure, product offerings or internal operating processes and systems. In our work with more than 200 banks around the world, including most of the large banks in the US, Europe and Australia, we’ve observed that the focus on simplicity creates capacity for new growth, as well as customer convenience and affinity. Infosys is running individual workshops with a number of banks and other commercial organisations to identify opportunities for transformation and innovation through a number of lenses, including simplicity. For information please contact me at andrew_groth@infosys.com or (02) 8912 1500.

Andrew Groth General Manager, Financial Services, Infosys Australia & New Zealand

www.infosys.com/anz ausinfo@infosys.com w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

a n a lys is // i nsu r a n c e

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i nsu r a nc e // a n a lys is

This exclusive report reveals 10 predictions that insurers need to focus on to revolutionise their business strategies. By Li-May Chew

The recession of 2008-09 was a turbulent storm for the financial services industry. Fortunately, the insurance segment – bar a few casualties – was able to ride it out without sustaining notable damage. However, while the skies may have cleared and insurers are once again sailing through calmer waters, they are operating in a changing and highly competitive environment fraught with unpredictability and challenges. These stem from increasingly educated but demanding customers, graying populations, higher frequencies of pandemics and natural calamities, regulatory reforms and increasingly stringent regulatory norms. Meanwhile, although top lines are typically expanding – and rapidly in some instances – so too are policyholder claims, rising expenses and competitive pressures, particularly within the auto line of business.

Top 10 predictions for asia Pacific

To understand what exactly sets leaders apart from the followers, IDC Financial Insights has compiled the top 10 predictions for 2011-12 to help insurers that want to thrive in this era of change stay sharp, strong, resilient, and relevant. The aim of our top 10 predictions is to bring together opinions on critical developments we foresee Asia Pacific-based insurers focused on for the new year. Note that although technology is often the underlying tool to achieve these predictions, our list may not always correlate with insurers’ IT expenditures. Rather the predictions reflect key approaches innovative insurers operating ahead of the curve are already integrating into their planning agendas for the year ahead. These predictions w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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Australian Insurance ICT Market, 2011 (A$M) 1950 1900 1850 1800 1750 1700 1650 1600 1550 1500 2011

2012

2013

2014

Source: IDC

fall into four overarching themes that we are witnessing within the post-crisis landscape. 1. Focus will remain on consolidating incongruent customer data and on identifying opportunities through analytical applications Data remains a valuable commodity, but insurers are increasingly being inundated with a plethora of information. This is spurring them to think more strategically about consolidating access to customer and transaction information though data warehouse or data mart projects and in utilising sophisticated business analytics to transform these into invaluable insights. We see the integration of incongruent customer data and identification of opportunities through analytical applications featuring highly on the radar of insurance executives in 2011-12.

Efforts around channel innovation and alternative distribution outreach, such as bancassurance, internet, mobile and direct marketing, are extremely relevant in the context of reducing distribution costs.

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2. Insurers will continue on their unwavering drive toward real customer centricity Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is becoming a fundamental corporate-level strategy for progressive insurers as they seek to leverage customer-facing applications to enhance relationships with profitable customer segments into what is termed as true relationship management. We anticipate marketing investments in 2011-12 gravitating toward new media and digital marketing such as online display advertisements, digital events, email marketing and newsletters and social networking.

3. An integrated multi-channel delivery model will become a mainstay as policyholders increasingly demand interaction via several customer touch points The advent of electronic channels and the emergence of a technology-savvy consumer generation are radically changing the distribution strategies of insurers. Efforts around channel innovation and alternative distribution outreach, such as bancassurance, internet, mobile and direct marketing, are extremely relevant in the context of reducing distribution costs and enabling insurers to provide affordable insurance to the masses. 4. Cost management and change transformation initiatives will further dominate the agenda The need for change transformation and business optimisation initiatives is sweeping across the region to counter IT portfolios and client delivery models that are overly complex and cost inefficient. We expect business process improvements to continue centering around process reengineering to manage intermediaries, enhancing productivity such as via exception-based underwriting, improving customer satisfaction by increasing efficiencies while minimising transactional errors and responding with maximum agility to regulatory amendments or changing business environments. 5. Imperatives to develop strategic roadmaps for the replacement or enhancement of core systems will continue Legacy core systems are showing signs of age after years of patching and fixing, meaning that insurers in Asia Pacific need to continuously maintain, patch and fix their legacy systems. These need to complement existing IT architecture, have open, multifaceted, expansible application systems, and interface with existing systems without business interruptions. 6. Insurers will exhibit growing interest in alternative modes of consuming technology as they strive to utilise the most cost effective IT infrastructure

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Progressive insurers might have relatively tighter purse strings vis-à-vis the banks and capital market firms but are not exempted from needing to remain cost conscientious. We are thus witnessing keener interest in the adoption of alternative technology delivery modes that are based on flexible, pay-per-use models such as cloud computing, with key Japanese insurers having already jumped into the cloud bandwagon. Once adoption concerns are ironed out, alternative technology delivery modes are likely to have potential to be among the most transformative developments in the world of IT.

Agents, while remaining the primary mode of insurance dissemination across Asia Pacific, are definitely not the most cost efficient distribution channel. To reap ROIs from agent engagement and sustain an effective agency distribution channel calls for insurers to provide financial digital devices and services on the internet or through mobile devices to help them work more efficiently and effectively. For instance, e-solution offerings serve to reduce proposal turnaround time, handle claims inquiries or perform financial need analysis for new customers.

7. Alternative lines like health and micro-insurance will be poised to become the next hotspots as carriers diversify revenue streams The year ahead will continue to see insurers broaden their horizons to ancillary lines of businesses such as health, micro and travel insurance, and build up internal expertise around these areas as they attempt to capture alternative customer segments and diversify revenue streams. To ensure that these new offerings – for instance microinsurance – grow to become profitable market segments, carriers are investing in technology and infrastructure to increase automation and ensure that internal processes are extremely lean and cost efficient.

10. Australian insurers will need to revisit their strategy for dealing with increasingly frequent adverse events The quick succession of the natural disasters in Australia – including floods in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, Cyclone Yasi in northern Queensland and bushfires around Perth – will impact the balance sheets of insurers through to 2012. For example, Insurance Australia Group (IAG), the largest domestic motor and home insurer, says it has already taken a A$300 million hit from weather events at the time of writing, and expects profit to fall sharply following these series of natural disasters. With the frequency of catastrophic events in Australia having more than tripled over the past 30 years, reinsurers like Munich Re and Swiss Re are already reconsidering their pricing model for Australia. This could possibly lead to higher reinsurance premiums in the near to medium term. It will be interesting to see how this situation pans out for Australian insurers – would there be a revision of reinsurance arrangements for upcoming years as reinsurers factor in the higher risks? How will insurers offset the higher risk expenses? And as subsidiaries seek additional capital from their foreign parent companies to cover losses, will international insurers revisit their growth strategies for Australia?

8. Regulatory efforts to streamline the industry and increase transparency will pick up steam Given the increasingly complex and competitive global environment going forward, insurance supervisors across Asia Pacific are putting forward a series of preemptive reforms to tighten management of insurers. The corresponding need for insurers to strengthen their ability to comply with the higher prudential standards and demonstrate better risk stewardship have them focusing investments on risk evaluation and mitigation to better align internal risk appetite with strategy and make more intelligent risk decisions. 9. Financial digital devices and services will continue to play a critical role in connecting agents and brokers to their client base

once adoption concerns are ironed out, alternative technology delivery modes are likely to have potential to become the most transformative developments in the world of iT.

Australian Insurance ICT Market by segment, 2011 (A$M)

14%

38% 23%

25%

Li-May Chew is an Associate Research Director for IDC Financial Insights Asia Pacific.

Services

Software

Hardware

Telecommunications

Source: IDC w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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m o b i le pay m e n t s // a n a lys is

on the move: Mobilising Payment systems it’s time to think differently about mobile payment systems, says Christophe Uzureau, Research Director at Gartner. The integration of the mobile phone into the retail payment value chain has been one of the most heavily hyped developments and is due to impact the payment market during the next three years. However, by introducing a new format and technology into this payment stream, banks and payment companies are also introducing additional points of failure. Banks and other established non-bank payment providers, new entrants, telecommunication service providers and myriad hardware and software vendors are all vying for a share of the so-called mobile payment market. But before looking at the opportunity, we need to make sure we know exactly what we are talking about and make the distinction between different types of mobile payment systems. There are two main types of mobile payment systems: • Over-the-Air (OTA) mobile payment systems: OTA mobile payment transactions are initiated by a mobile handset and authorised via a wireless network operated by a mobile operator or a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). Debits can be to bank cards or accounts, mobile phone bills or prepaid accounts. • Integrated Contactless Mobile Payment (ICMP) systems: ICMP systems are relying on handsets equipped with a contactless chip and that contain an embedded antenna that enables the handsets to communicate, using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), with contactless Point-of-Sale (POS) readers. This communication w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

a n a lys is // m o b ile pay m e n t s

Delivering value to customers and participating banks requires a new approach to the design and deployment of mobile financial services. Using the analogy of an arch, the mobile technology is the keystone – the architectural piece at the crown of an arch that marks its apex – locking the other pieces into position. However, the omission or removal of any of the stones would cause the arch to collapse, as would a mobile financial services strategy that failed to deliver on ROI if any other components are not considered. When designing a mobile financial services strategy, banks need to take into account all of the necessary building blocks: • Current demand and supply conditions: Mobile financial services are not being introduced in a vacuum. Banks must look into the economic situation, socioeconomic factors, industry structure, and how the demand for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and financial services is evolving

Understand how the current regulatory regime can influence product development and the banks’ control over them.

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technology is commonly referred to by the telecom and semiconductor industry as Near Field Communication (NFC). Taking into account these two types of mobile payment systems, we then need to identify how mobile payment systems and related services would either augment the existing payment value chain and/or replace selected parts of a retail payment value chain. Mobile payment systems can’t succeed in isolation of a broader approach encompassing all mobile financial services – the use of mobile devices to deliver banking, payment and investment products and services. This presents some unique challenges: • The complexity of the value chain necessary and the need for revenue sharing • Technology centricity – the selection of the supporting technology including mobile devices, operating systems, Short Message Service (SMS), unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), Java or thin clients, is only one of the parameters • Local requirements such as existing banking and customer payment habits, cross-industry structure and regulatory environment, which make any technology centric solutions open to failure

• Regulation: Understand how the current regulatory regime can influence product development and the banks’ control over them. This includes non-financial regulations, notably those related to consumer privacy • Governance: The existing governance model for banks’ operations could act as an accelerator or actually damage the ROI for mobile financial services • Product and service gap analysis: Mobile financial services should be a response to current gaps and inefficiencies in the existing channel mix and portfolio of products and services managed by the bank • Mobile financial services segmentation: Taking into account demand factors and the gaps identified in your analysis, what are the mobile financial services that should be delivered for each combination of banking service and customer categories? • Mobile technology capabilities: Mobile technology is evolving rapidly, and banks

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must develop an understanding of the potential for new applications and the related risks. This includes the availability, capabilities and penetration of handsets as well as new mobile technologies, operating systems and applications • Skills in demand: Security/risk management and compliance requirements will demand new skills, notably due to the uncertainty of the security risks posed by mobile devices and networks • Ecosystem management: It goes without saying that banks will have to build new partnerships and manage a new ecosystem of providers to enable mobile financial services. However, what really matters is how banks choose to segment those providers and develop new roles and analytics to manage conflicting interests. Most important is that they clarify the customer engagement model from the outset

• Financials: Taking into account that a large proportion of mobile financial services have failed to deliver on their initial ROI, the financials deserve more attention. For example, some companies launching new mobile payment systems have failed to acknowledge some of the components of the cost base (for example R-transactions – rejections, refunds and returns) when assessing the potential revenue • Distribution: The delivery of a solution as part of an ecosystem of providers demands a coordinated marketing approach, while the customer registration process will need to involve strong multi-channel integration supported by staff training across the bank network.

Banks will have to build new partnerships and manage a new ecosystem of providers to enable mobile financial services.

The objective is to design – per market – a mobile financial services matrix – as shown in Figure 4. The creation of this matrix is one of the fundamental steps often missing

Figure 4: Mobile financial services matrix must come first Consumers

Unbanked/ Underbanked

Sales and Marketing

• Mobile campaigns • Reminders • Application status

Account Services

• Alert services • Presentment • Language support • Rewards management

Security

• Multifactor auth. • Multifactor auth. • Notification • Notification • Confirmation • Confirmation • Activate/cancel card

Merchants

SMBs

Commercial Customers

Internal Services

• Mobile campaigns

• Mobile campaigns • Reminders • Application status

• Local branch campaign • In-branch registration • Financial advice

• Alert services • Presentment

• In-branch support

• Notification • Confirmation

• Multifactor auth. • Notification • Confirmation • Multitier auth.

• Payroll services

• Alert services • Alert services • Presentment • Presentment • Language support

Transactional • Mobile pre-paid Services top-up • Fund transfers • P2P

• Microloan repayment • International remittances • Utility bills

• E-commerce gateway • Wireless POS • NFS

Business Intelligence

• Contextual data

• Credit card • Credit card • Credit card • Analytics/stock • Contextual data • Industry/market data • Industry/market data market data • Industry/market data • Credit data

• Contextual data

• In-branch support • Trading services

Source: Gartner w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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Figure 5: What really matters for consumers

from the design of a business case for mobile financial services. To achieve real personalisation and differentiation via mobile financial services, banks will need to create that matrix. This is fundamental to ensuring demand factors are fully taken into account.

Consumers (do not appear to) want: 2.6

Biometric payment system

3.2

best laid plans and taxi drivers: from acquiring to issuing

2.5 2.7

Contactless card

Mobile payment system to SMBs

1.7

Mobile payment system

1.7

Mobile payment system P2P

1.7

2.9

2.7

2.8 1.5

Social network P2P payment

2.6 1

All adults 18–24 1 = Strongly disagree 5 = Strongly agree

Consumers (in fact) want: 3.9 3.8

Fraud management Financial Relationship Rewards

3.8 3.4

Internet Payment tracking and fund release

3.6 3.7

Spending Analytics

2.7 3.5 1

All adults 18–24 1 = Strongly disagree 5 = Strongly agree Source: Gartner

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A Gartner analyst’s recent experience with a new payment card acquiring service being offered by taxi drivers from Italy’s Milan airport did not enhance his user experience, but instead raised major concerns about the security and integrity of his payment data. He was paying for his journey using a payment card, rather than with cash, and instead of a normal payment terminal, the taxi driver was using his mobile phone as a POS terminal. On inquiry, the driver explained that it was cheaper to use his mobile phone to accept card payments than to use a bank-issued POS terminal, due to the frequency of card payments the taxi driver had to handle. Sounds like a great idea. However, the use of the phone to capture the payment card data had a negative effect on the analyst’s perception of the safety of his data, not the least of which was the need for him to supply his mobile phone number to the taxi driver after the taxi driver entered the card number on his mobile device. Then, the analyst’s mobile device – which was registered in another country – had to acknowledge the download of an application from the acquirer in order to confirm the transaction. The receipt was by an SMS text message. The customer’s concerns included: • Was the phone the driver’s personal phone? In that case, what security was in place to ensure that the credit card data was stored securely? What would happen to the data if the phone was stolen, or when the phone is replaced at the end of the contract? • Could the driver abuse the data on the phone – maybe by transmitting the data to a third party other than the bank? • How long would the data be stored on the phone? • Was the application downloaded onto the payer’s mobile device securely?

The novelty of the task, the awareness of the potential for fraud and even the worry that the card would be blocked by the issuer led to an instant reaction of: “It must be easier and safer to use cash.” If the taxi driver didn’t insist this system was OK – and the analyst wasn’t interested in the final outcome of the payment process – for many consumers, payment by cash would have prevailed.

Customer education is critical

This example shows how important the merchant is as a part of the customer education process. The unexpected and unexplained introduction of mobile phones into the payment value chain may undermine the rollout of more mobile based financial applications. Even if your bank has no plans to roll out such an acquiring technology, start to educate your customers on what to expect, and how to react, if confronted by such solutions. For instance, inform consumers about their liability and protection in case of fraud from such a transaction. There is growing impetus for the adoption of mobile phones as POS devices, for example, the Square solution from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. Square consists of a small magnetic reader that attaches to the headphone socket of an iPhone or similar smartphone. It allows the owner, in conjunction with an account set up with Square, to accept card payments from most individuals by swiping the card through the magnetic stripe reader, and capturing the customer’s signature on the screen. In this case, while the technology may initially appear persuasive, banks and card issuers must think long and hard about the customer’s perception involved in such transactions, as they may end up undermining many of the controls and balances they have previously put in place to secure card payments.

Check your fundamentals before launching new payment instruments

Consumers’ payment habits are highly rigid. Before launching new payment instruments, banks must strengthen consumer trust by investing in account and payment information services. In a recent survey of US consumers,

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less than nine per cent agreed that they would like to use their mobile phones to pay for goods or services. Consumer payment habits vary by geography, but despite the marketing capability of payment providers (notably card associations), consumers’ interest in emerging payment instruments remains low. In contrast, as part of the same consumer survey, 58 per cent of respondents agreed that they don’t need any new payment instruments. Cash, payment cards and PayPal are responding to all their requirements. Other findings included: • Consumers trust debit card issuers, credit card issuers and PayPal, while six in 10 US consumers surveyed do not trust mobile operators for their payment needs

• Consumers are not naturally interested in emerging payment systems. They are more interested in fraud management, relationship rewards, and tools to track and better control their spending activities. They need those services as part of any emerging payment solutions • Convergence of payment instruments is limited by consumers’ interest in and ability to manage a portfolio of payment instruments.

a matter of trust

Consumers trust debit and credit card providers to support their payment needs. This trust equity is important at a time when an increasing number of surveys point out that banks are not trusted, notably due to their perceived role in

Consumers are not naturally interested in emerging payment systems. They are more interested in fraud management, relationship rewards, and tools to track and better control their spending activities.

over-the-air mobile phone payment systems for Developed markets In developed payment markets like Australia and New Zealand, the role of over-the-air (OTA) mobile phone payments is to respond to gaps in existing consumers’ payment instrument portfolios by complementing existing payment instruments (for example, ticketing, parking or remote top-up of mobile phone prepaid balances). As a result, developed markets are moving toward multi-payment instruments, with more payment instruments and combinations of payment instruments. The first role of the mobile phone is to support existing payment systems, for example, for security by serving as a second factor of authentication or for presentment to assist users in keeping track of their spending activities. For example, the main driver for consumers to download the PayPal iPhone application launched in 2010 is related to

consumers’ ability to better manage their PayPal accounts. As a result, this is more about account integration than replacing existing payment solutions with the mobile phone. In turn, this actually provides the right platform to grow the number of transactions originated via the mobile device. Consumers’ payment habits are very difficult to change. As a result, turning mobile phones into devices that can originate payment transactions will demand strong incentives, account services and demonstrations that they are secured. Providers such as PayPal, which are relatively trusted by consumers, have the ability to influence consumers. However, for many new payment brands, the challenges are likely to be too great, and most of them will fail to gain any traction. Rather than focusing on developing OTA mobile payment solutions yourself, look to

develop collaborative payment schemes to take into account any existing applications that are relevant to customers, such as transit and loyalty schemes, and use them as catalysts for your payment solutions. Participate in mobile payment pilots to learn and develop applications, but ensure that these are viewed as R&D. Most of them will never lead to a sustainable revenue stream. In developed markets, OTA mobile phone payment systems will become part of the increasingly complex portfolio of payment instruments and solutions that banks are managing. However, they will not become a dominant payment system for banks. They serve niche requirements and the mobile phone should be used, first and foremost, to support the management of payment information (for presentment, analytics and coupons), and to support existing payment systems.

Australia Forecast: Mobile Device Sales 2010-2014 (Thousands of Units) Smartphones Total mobile device sales

2010 4,428.65 10,215.09

2011 5,728.08 10,575.44

2012 6,961.88 11,359.09

2013 8,221.79 11,667.24

2014 9,633.13 12,279.32

Source: Gartner (December 2010)

In 2010, smartphones represented 43 per cent of all mobile phones sold in Australia. By 2014, that is expected to reach 78 per cent.

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a n a lys is // m o b ile pay m e n t s

Consumer trust takes time to build, and demands an investment into key account services, a demonstration of strong fraud management capabilities and the use of payment information for the benefit of the consumer.

triggering the 2008 financial crisis. But this overall level of mistrust hasn’t damaged consumer trust in banks as payment providers. Consumers rely on banks’ payment instruments on a daily basis, creating a recurrent opportunity for banks to demonstrate value. In comparison, trust in mobile operators is low. A Gartner survey of US and UK consumers showed that only 10 per cent of consumers trust them. It could be argued that, since mobile operators don’t have a long track record of bringing payment solutions to consumers, this is not a valid indication of the potential of mobile operators as payment providers to consumers. However, this doesn’t change the current consumers’ perception that those providers are not trustworthy enough to support their payment needs. Demonstrating value will take more time, and as a result, the initial business case for emerging payment solutions such as a mobile payment system launched by a mobile operator, is probably much weaker than those providers currently conceive.

Recommendations

When launching a new payment instrument, banks should: • Ensure consumers are fully aware of how you would deal with fraud • Deliver tools and analytics so your customers feel in control over the spending activity supported by the new instrument • Introduce spending analytics and tracking services first to their younger customers. Those customers remain undecided on their payment preferences and are therefore an easier target for non-bank payment providers entering the market with new payment solutions • Ensure new instruments are fully integrated as part of the portfolio of payment instruments they provide for their customers • Reward consumers for the extent of their relationship with the organisation and that the use of the new payment instrument is a parameter of financial relationship rewards. Consumer trust takes time to build, and demands an investment into key account services, a demonstration of strong fraud management capabilities and the use of payment information for the benefit of the consumer. This especially applies to mobile payment systems. Banks are not in control of the whole mobile payment value chain, but they are in control of account services and related analytics. The development of such services should be a priority, combined with the development of mobile financial services matrices. By doing so, banks will strengthen consumer trust in their payment services while supporting personalisation. Consumer trust is very difficult for non-bank payment providers to capture.

Christophe Uzureau is Research Director, Financial Services, at Gartner. He advises business development managers and strategists inside payment services providers and banks on how to generate competitive advantage through payment processes.

who ’s who of fs i

Information management Application delivery Content Management Collaboration Virtualisation Unified communications Platform services Business intelligence Managed ICT services

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Sense and Respond: Key Leverage Points in Insurance

Seated (left to right): Bob Gearing, Head of Transformation & Integration, Insurance, BT Financial Group; Elizabeth Taylor, Head of Operations, Zurich; Ewald Bruggeman, Senior Director Financial Services, Asia Pacific, Oracle; Ruth Keaney, Chief Underwriter and Head of Underwriting & Claims Strategic Solutions, CommInsure; Chuck Johnston, Global Vice President Strategy, Insurance, Oracle; Wendy Scott, General Manager, Information & Programme Services, RACQ. Standing (left to right): Daniel Calleja, Head of IT Business Engagement, OnePath; Richard Poole, Head of Group Life Services, Tower; John Myler, General Manager Direct & Life Insurance, Allianz; Tremayne West, Group Manager Strategy, Research & Development, Allianz; Alfred Flokstra, Director Financial Services, Australia & New Zealand, Capgemini; Shez Ford, Head of Life Risk Operations & Customer Service, OnePath; Michael Paff, Director Wealth Protection Products, AMP; Brian Fair, Chief Information Officer, Wesfarmers Insurance; Megan Beer, Head of Finance, MLC; Matt Pancino, Executive General Manager Business Technology Applications, Suncorp; Noelene Palmer, Head of Claims, Tower. The executives featured in this roundtable editorial held the above positions at the time of publication.

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chuck Johnston, oracle: The insurance industry is a fascinating place to work right now, given the discussions around the ‘new normal’ for the industry. As a software vendor we spend a lot of time thinking about how we enable our customers with capabilities to help deal with the velocity of change. There is now an expectation of continuous change that won’t necessarily be incremental; our businesses may suddenly take another hard right or a hard left simply because the external factors that are driving the market places are starting to impact insurance more directly. We are driving a lot of our strategy around the idea of the adaptive enterprise, where you move away from making and selling product to a more long-term, stimulus response model in which you sense change in your environment and try to build the organisation to respond very quickly. In the insurance industry we tend to have products that have to be very controlled

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and tightly managed. Most of our customers are trying to respond quickly in two ways. The first is giving your representatives the ability to be as flexible as possible. Many customers want to bundle and use configuration and wrappers on the front-end to empower financial advisors and brokers and even online channels. Second they are looking at how quickly they can bring a new product to market. We’ve started to think deeply about the sense and respond model and how it can enable insurers agility. How do we help our customers become flexible while still maintaining control of their enterprise? We are in an industry where control and oversight is becoming more and more important but change is occurring rapidly. We all have great intentions to be strategic when we put our business plans together and we’re trying very hard to manage certain metrics and to really understand our business. Most of the really interesting information about our customers lies in the customer and product systems, and they’re the ones that tend to mutate very quickly. A day one product project might be to get the policy up and printed and the day two stuff is all about the information, the MIS, and all the regulatory material, but somehow that day two project just keeps slipping and slipping. We’re seeing a desire to have access to that information within core systems. We have helped many of our customers in building galactic data warehouses but there is more of an emphasis on the information within operational systems now – such as what’s in the underwriting queue today or what was booked last week – as opposed to a huge analytical database for which you still need actuaries. The desire to know what’s happening within your business and get very close to your operational systems is critical from the sense side because often things like the shape of the business and your underwriting queue tell you what’s going to happen over the next six to 12 months. You don’t want to wait six months to see that in some operational report, you want that dashboard to be there for you in the morning. So the sense side of business – business intelligence – is critical. But so is the response side. If you have to spend months and months making a change to your business, you’re going to have a problem. We are seeing a real drive towards incremental change in a controlled manner on a regular basis. There is a big focus on process change – the ability to change people, process and technology on a regular basis. Often the people are the most important part of a change process simply because if you train staff to be flexible within your processes, they can do a lot with existing systems and processes. Then they start to drive change and say if

you really want me to be able to sense and respond at the front line, which is where a lot of this change needs to occur, I need these changes to processes, and these changes to technology to make it work. We are spending a lot of time with customers talking about the idea of long-term enablement of incremental change. How do we change our base structures in such a way that our customers can make these changes very easily? Our product offerings involve a lot of rules engines and configuration. In the 1980s one of our biggest insurance technology problems was fighting the weight of the systems. The insurance industry was the first adopter of technology in some areas and we carry that weight of history. So we’re spending a lot of time thinking about how you deal with existing infrastructures. No one’s going to burn down our house and build a new one. You’re constantly going to be trying to renovate in moving the application architecture forward. We are also talking with customers about how you work within the industry and understand where your leverage points are. Some customers are putting in ‘Enterprise Service Bus’ and they’re putting in modern financial systems and HR systems. But the systems that give you the most business leverage are the policy administration and claims systems and those are the most difficult to modernise at the enterprise level. We believe very strongly that if you want to take the CIO out of the hot seat of being in the critical path of business change, the real trick is to figure out where the strategic investments and the strategic levers are. If you can find those levers and focus on those, the technology investments become worthwhile.

ewald bruggeman, oracle: Oracle Insurance

“We’ve started to think deeply about the sense and respond model and how it can enable insurers agility.” chuck johnston, oracle

is working closely with a select group of partners in the Australian insurance market. Capgemini is a very valued partner and in a joint collaboration we have helped organisations unlock the potential of cuttingedge software and world class consulting services to transform enterprises into adaptive, agile businesses. The World Insurance Report (WIR) is a leading industry report that provides strategic insights into critical issues and trends impacting the global insurance industry. Alfred Flokstra from Capgemini will now touch on some points of relevance from the WIR.

alfred flokstra, capgemini: Every year we conduct many interviews across the globe with your peers in the insurance industry to get strategic insight into the challenges, critical issues and trends that impact the global insurance industry. Most of the trends we see are not new, but we see differences in w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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“Technology can be a great enabler to realise goals and it’s often a prerequisite to starting a transformation and being successful.” alfred flokstra, capgemini

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how insurers are trying to address those trends. It’s a given that the industry is changing rapidly, your customer is becoming a volatile part of your business. Loyalty and buying behaviour are changing, and innovation within distribution channels and the integration between distribution channels is emerging. Regulatory requirements are changing constantly and with changing demographics the sociological context is changing. At the same time technology is constantly evolving and the combination of your products, increased competition and new entrants means your landscape is changing. In 2008 the WIR addressed these trends and they seem to be reappearing. In 2008 insurance tried to move away from a ‘stock-based’ business to a more ‘fluid’ business. In Europe the average policy holder had five to six policies, and the average relationship with a policy holder was about nine years. Insurance was perceived to be positive and a vital part of financial security and you had loyal customers – even after a negative claim experience they still stayed with you. Advice was valued and was important when buying a product. But that share of wallet has now decreased. In Europe the number of policies has decreased to 1.5 on average; the length of the relationship with customers has dropped to less than five years. The internet is becoming very disruptive with more than 10 per cent of people buying policies through internet. Price has become a driving force, and commoditisation a strong trend. For 66 per cent of customers price is the main criteria for buying cover, and the proliferation of distributors, specialists and competition has added to a changing environment. In 2009 it was about growing maturity by adopting a multi-distribution model. Multi-distribution is a strong growth enabler in mature markets, and Australia is a mature market. Moving to a multi-distribution model touches the whole enterprise, not only a claims centre or the generic functions. So in the WIR 2009 we identified seven logical components that enabled the transformation to multidistribution. And it all starts with the customer. You want to be where your customer is. The organisational structure and leadership need to embrace technology to facilitate that alignment with the customer. The incremental approach creates more successes when rolled out on a constant ‘test and learn’ basis and monitors the value of the overall business throughout the transformation. And perhaps the most important lesson is to ‘seize and wield’ the power of the information you possess. Many insurers in Europe and the US have developed significant capabilities in the initial stages of these

seven components but only a few have matured into more advanced multi-distribution models. In 2010 we focus on business agility and maturity – the ability to sense highly uncertain external and internal changes and adapt rapidly and cost effectively. You gain a competitive edge by leveraging human, but also technology resources, to the best possible extent. We identified four agility levers within the insurance value chain. Agility within product design is an important lever as is changing customer needs, competition and regulation, which require efficient product design and launch capability. What we see now is a lot of product rationalisation or transformation. Another important lever is your front office; improve your speed to market, customer service and distribution capabilities. If you’ve done that then you will get customer satisfaction, retention, cross-sell opportunities and an increased share of wallet. Shortened transaction times lead to increased satisfaction and internal productivity. Insurers who start transforming the policy, admin and underwriting side of the business see increased internal productivity. Efficient claims handling is critical to creating loyal customers. Where to start? Many insurers are recovering from the global financial crisis, so everything is focused on reducing cost and increasing profitability, but you also have to deal with all the trends we’ve just mentioned. Insurers in Australia, Europe and the US launch longterm improvement and transformation programs, but they do it from different angles, using technology to achieve innovative processes and sustainable competitive advantage. If you zoom in on Australia, we are seeing programs to improve margins through economies of scale. Claims and policy factories are being centralised, support functions are being brought together and we are seeing a rationalisation in product, people and channel. Insurers are asking: “Do we have the right people? Do we have the right agents and brokers to sell our product? Are we selling the right product?” We see landscape rationalisation to reduce total cost of ownership, sunset obsolete systems and improved transparency and simplicity in organisations. We see acquisitions and mergers coming and we see insurers exiting certain markets while other insurers enter certain markets based on different ideas. Insurers are trying to be either cost leaders, product leaders or process leaders. We see more activity in claims procurement analysis, implementation of claims prediction solutions and a growing focus on fraud prediction and prevention. Technology can be a great enabler to realise goals and it’s often a prerequisite to starting a transformation and being successful. But

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your information is the most critical part – business intelligence is underdeveloped within the insurance industry. Creating or getting a single version of the truth needs to be done first for a company to move ahead of the competition.

ewald bruggeman, oracle: Within adaptive organisations what are the key leverage points in the insurance sense and response cycle?

megan beer, mlc: We have so much valuable information that will assist us to operate our business, but as an industry we don’t have a great track record in converting that into information that we respond to. Responding to claims information could be the key leverage point if we tap into it. chuck Johnston, oracle: Are you referring to the claims underwriting loop – that claims drive the underwriting criteria, which seems to break down?

megan beer, mlc: That’s correct. What do you learn from that in terms of taking product to market, rather than taking product to market because we think we understand what the consumer is asking for? Also, how can we use the information to better manage claims? shez ford, onepath: Our business model is based on our claims philosophy, which is central to how you are perceived and the position you have in the market. The product is your ticket to play. You have to have a decent product that you are happy to offer; pricing is of course relevant and then service comes into play. The combination of all of that underpinned by shareholder demands is relevant to managing the business effectively. You can’t do one and not the other; you have to balance managing scalability, managing product and customer needs. To do that effectively we need to be agile – technology and accurate data analytics is key.

ewald bruggeman, oracle: With regard to improved information transparency helping insurers achieve better operational awareness, how do the dimensions of the customer channel input and product transparency intersect within the organisation to provide certain insights? matt pancino, suncorp: Our CEO mandated that we generate a single view of the customer, because he sees it as critical to having an informed view. Knowing all the dimensions of a customer means that we’re in a far better position to segment and target that market with our different products. Suncorp’s brands serve

many differentiated market segments, and the key for us is offering those branded products to the right customers. This is where our single customer view makes the biggest difference for us.

chuck Johnston, oracle: I’ve been involved in centralised customer projects since the mid-1980s. They started out as very CRM-type contact information projects and then people started adding in product and claims information. We have all that data and we usually say it’s the legacy systems that keep us from applying it in other ways, but you would think after 25 years that we would have done that. Do you think the value proposition is seen throughout the enterprise as strategic a project as bringing in a new product or a new brand to market? matt pancino, suncorp: The value of a single customer view was realised early on, and was mandated across the company. Suncorp’s strategy is to be one company with many brands, and having that vision made the decision a ‘no brainer’. I don’t think we’ve yet realised the full potential of what this data can give us, but what is interesting is that the culture within Suncorp is now one where teams have permission to share this customer information amongst product teams. daniel calleJa, onepath: The software development life cycle is a piece that fits over, above and before that. Has it assisted? Has having that information helped you make better business decisions?

matt pancino, suncorp: While I’m still new to the organisation, what I see is we are still yet to unlock the full potential of the information. For this reason, I’m not in a position to comment on whether we are making better decisions yet. Additionally, I don’t know whether we can claim that it has halved our product development cycle yet, or increased our yields on a particular product. What I can tell you is that the agile development practices we use, lead us to develop these capabilities faster than I have seen in any other industry.

“You can’t do one and not the other; you have to balance managing scalability, managing product and customer needs.” shez ford, onepath

elizabeth taylor, zurich: The focus now is on how to analyse and use that information. I think the challenge is training. ewald bruggeman, oracle: Does it also go along with a certain type of leadership? Because it requires a more substantial internal project scope to make sure you end up with quality data. We know that within the insurance sector many acquisitions resulted in a dispersed landscape of systems that all contained certain information about customers or finance or products. w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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chuck Johnston, oracle: I had a very interesting theoretical discussion recently about channel economics. My colleague’s point was that every model starts with bad data and over time you refine it. Balancing multi-channel is challenging because every channel has an economy tied to it and some are high margin, some are lower margin, some are high maintenance and usually involving insurance agency brokers, some are lower maintenance. Do you have a feel for this balancing act? My sense is that distribution across channel will be a big issue going forward. Different channels have different economics. bob gearing, bt financial group: It’s a somewhat complicated model, whether it be a General or a Life Insurance model. As managers within that business you’ve got to understand the various ‘levers and dials’ and the impact that moving those has on the economics of the business model. That will continue to be the case. Understanding the economics of your model is important – everyone needs to have a certain familiarity with the financial impact on what they do within the business, because understanding the economics of that and how they vary with factors like volume strongly informs how you develop that part of the business model. tremayne west, allianz: The real point should be “You have to evolve with your customers, generate stimulus and anticipate the response.” john myler, allianz

around the external view. Sense and respond is about what the customers and consumers want. The interesting challenge we’re all facing is do customers or even different segments of the customer base want different products or differentiation in products? How do we understand that and how do we then respond to that?

chuck Johnston, oracle: This is something we spend a lot of time thinking about because it has a great impact on infrastructure and the business model. Do you see that loop happening at the point of sale? Do you see that loop happening as part of the product life cycle?

daniel calleJa, onepath: Going through that loop is very product centric. Are there other ways to determine what new types of product customers are looking for? The concept of me going to the iTunes store and downloading an insurance application is not very sexy and I’m probably not going to do that. But is there a different way of doing it so that it’s outside the normal loop?

chuck Johnston, oracle: Farmers insured property within Second Life or World of Warcraft; it was a publicity stunt, but it was a way to try to make 38

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insurance cool. You could insure your broad sword against theft by a troll, for example. I think those attempts are rather creative.

bob gearing, bt financial group: That’s an innovative approach to helping people understand the need for insurance, rather than product innovation in itself. There is an old problem of under-insurance in Australia. A lot of the work and focus needs to be put on how to get the right opportunity to have a conversation with a customer, whether that is online or intermediated. Customers are receptive at the right time – we need to be aware of how to leave the customer with a desire to act.

John myler, allianz: There’s a symbiotic relationship at work with customers. Driven by consumer demand, we innovate offerings, which in turn provide customers with stimulus which will evolve their needs over time. It’s a two-way evolution. I remember a market research case study on developing the best cassette tape based on customer research. Of course the customers involved could never imagine, and therefore demand such a thing as a CD. It’s about using technology to inspire demand. You have to evolve with your customers, generate stimulus and anticipate the response.

richard poole, tower: The data we have now is going to help us identify when somebody is a potential customer. We have different insurance needs at different ages. And if we can identify the underinsured we won’t have to wait for them to actually make a decision themselves, we have that realisation and we can plant the seed at that point. So people will be prompted to think, “I’m getting married, I might need insurance” or “I just bought a house, I need something extra”. We should be proactive in identifying those points of change in people’s product cycle.

ewald bruggeman, oracle: If you already have relevant information in your systems that you potentially could share with your financial planners, what hinders that process today? Is it complexity? richard poole, tower: I don’t think all the data necessarily resides within our own businesses, so you might need to look outside and see where that data might be available to cross-match it. One of the difficult things in doing that is people having a fear of giving up IP or some sort of leverage – but then neither party wins. We need to look for collaboration across different businesses and in different sectors for a common win

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overall. Remaining mindful of the privacy issues – this could be from private or public sectors – we should be collaborating and not so protective of some data, like birth records, for example.

chuck Johnston, oracle: There are certain service bureaus where you share information about claims and fraud and things of that nature. Many of those things were mandated either by central regulation or because you couldn’t otherwise stay in business. People have their marketing segmentation databases loaded with information they buy, and then they have their operational data elsewhere. I’m talking to several customers that are looking at very specific applications that understand how to join data, because they literally live in two different climates. That speaks to a mindset as much as anything else. Do you think it is fear of IP loss or just that people think they’re two different worlds or they’re two different organisations? richard poole, tower: I think fear of loss of IP is a big thing. IP retention is seen as very important and as a key differentiator. It’s also a cultural issue. It’s not just the IP, sometimes it’s just a matter of, “we’re not going to share our data, it’s ours and it’s taken us years to build up and we’re not going to share it”.

tremayne west, allianz: I think it’s a mindset depending on your perspective; for example if you’re a product or portfolio manager you’re interested in your dataset for profitability, product performance, and channel performance. It’s not necessarily there as a customer focus data set providing insight on behavioural traits; it has a primary focus on product and financial performance. The insurance industry must become more sophisticated. We are now starting to get integration across the two layers. They have rich customer data, and rich financial performance and actuarial performance data. So how do we move into this more evolutionary space? John myler, allianz: It is important to remember that data is only relevant if it influences decisions – otherwise it is of no value. Document the business drivers that make data relevant. That’s where you need to start. What am I trying to achieve? What do I need to know to improve my business? There are a lot of projects where companies throw large sums of money and resources into a data analytics system without first understanding the business drivers.

michael paff, amp: The challenge within large organisations is finding a way to integrate data across

different areas and using this information to inform business decisions. For example, companies may benefit from looking at how they can use the data they have about their customers, such as which claims were and weren’t paid, to design products that better meet customers’ needs. Likewise, as most financial planners have large client bases, the ability to comprehensively analyse the customer data available could provide the planners with deeper insights into their client base and better inform their advice.

wendy scott, racq: We have been tied to a legacy system for the last 15 years so we have a lot of text fields that hold valuable information. Because they’re free-formed text fields we’re going through quite an exercise now in mining those text fields and trying to pull out the value that’s there. But that’s an expensive exercise and it requires a lot of thought about what you’re actually trying to pull out from it. A field could be titled something and for five years used for one particular activity and then the next five years it turns to something else. ruth keaney, comminsure: Business intelligence has not been developed well across the insurance industry to date. We’re hearing collectively that our legacy systems either don’t have the fields or were not designed historically to retrieve key customer data and we don’t mine our claims information well. To move forward, we’re going to need to draw a line in the sand at some point soon, so we can look towards other information sources. We need to consider current and emerging trends and academic research more. If we continue to only look behind at what the retrospective data in our legacy systems is telling us, we may miss critical emerging trends. My interest is primarily in the life insurance underwriting and claims activities and the quality of the end-to-end feedback loops feeding into product development. But that alone may not forecast future claims accurately and what customer disclosure trends in underwriting may look like. We’re going to have to move beyond our current systems data limitations and also look externally to the wonderful World Wide Web for additional information to predict future outcomes. Accessing available online data and scientific research data will compliment and support business intelligence models and help us to predict trends more accurately. After all, if 50 to 80 cents in every dollar is potential claims costs, certainly a worthwhile investment is to take a greater holistic view of what we can learn both internally from our systems and also externally in this digital online age.

“The challenge within larger organisations is finding a way to integrate data across different areas and using this information to inform business decisions.” michael paff, amp

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“As leaders we need to be open to the challenge of change and open to new ideas as well.” ruth keaney, comminsure

Life insurance will need to get more creative – accessing new forms of potentially useful data is vital to this next wave of change. Certainly there are positive changes happening within our industry today. Smaller, smarter technology software pieces emerging such as the industry implementing online underwriting rules engines is essential to accessing more granular information from these new systems. This is evolving and perhaps will allow us to be less fixated about solving the costly problem of our legacy policy systems.

actually doing about that?” Are we taking just one view of change or do we have a holistic view? As leaders we need to be open to the challenge of change and open to new ideas as well.

chuck Johnston, oracle: We talk to a lot of customers about predictive analytics and often it is not about a hard linear regression against a field, or a first order correlation. A lot of the data that’s locked in your own systems is cost prohibitive to use for this purpose unless you’re going to literally do a policy admin transformation. That requires a huge disruption. But often for this kind of trending I don’t know how accurate you have to be in the first approximation.

ewald bruggeman, oracle: The combination of skills and leadership of change management is important. How can technology serve you there? Do you feel you have to develop it yourselves? Or can you take it from the market and support your own faculty?

shez ford, onepath: You’ve got to start somewhere though and dip into some analytics because even before you get to the opportunity that exists with having a single view of the customer, there are huge opportunities available in the market. The problem is that we are in an industry that is significantly reliant on technical specialists and there are not enough of them to go around, whether it’s claims assessors or underwriters. Having the capability to have predictive analytics and take a true risk-based perspective combined with technology is absolutely necessary today. Without it, it is almost impossible to deliver sustainable solutions and make true progress. ruth keaney, comminsure: I completely agree. Diversity of people coming into Insurance is also very important. If we are going to move to embrace or increase emphasis on predictive modelling risk tools, we will need to consider current and new skill sets and careers coming into our industry. If we can embrace this style of forward thinking then we may find additional sources of valuable data which is more accessible and cheaper to obtain. That in itself will create a differentiator and as an industry will help to support sustainable longer term models that sense and respond to deal with rapid changes. We are in interesting times – we are starting to move from the traditional to a more contemporary type of thinking gradually. Change management is critical – we have to say to ourselves, “the underwriting and claims feedback loop isn’t where it should be, what are we

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noelene palmer, tower: We certainly need to be open to newer ways of doing things. The people element is something I’m certainly very passionate about. As we grow as an industry we’re not bringing in new talent and new skill sets. I think that’s something we need to challenge ourselves on.

noelene palmer, tower: There’s certainly a piece around scale: how do you make sure your business is operating in a way that as you grow it’s not just about adding more to it? Technology is certainly going to be a key driver for that. You need the technology there to be able to grow and not just keep throwing additional resources at it constantly. But I think sharing information and taking it from the market is also important.

matt pancino, suncorp: How do we start the agile journey as an industry? We have a very large software vendor and systems integrator with us. Chuck, you talk about the notion of responding as adaptive enterprises, and then changing in small increments – my question is, what’s Oracle doing specifically to encourage customers to sense and respond in order to be agile? chuck Johnston, oracle: Everyone gets very excited about cloud, thinking it’s going to save them financially. But at the end of the day somewhere, somebody has to buy a pretty large piece of hardware and some software and make a bet on leveraging that across the cloud. Ultimately it all comes out of the cloud to something tangible. A lot of things that will buy you agility do tend to have price tags. Many of us went through that back when we all thought installing dark fibre was going to save us and there is probably a lot of dark fibre that is wasted bandwidth out there right now. We are seeing a number of very large enterprise change projects. We have to find ways of servicing the proof of concepts and they are often aligned to business, or possibly a product. Customers come to us with particular initiatives, but would like to start small. They might like to put in technology that can scale from

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50,000 new policies and a new unit link policy. If they like it and it enables the business they might then like a strategy for 100 million policies, recognising the fact that there has to be some scale of price both on software and delivery. We have to get beyond just saying, “well here’s our software, it’s great, it can scale and I’ve got a license model from one policy to one million.” We’re starting to do things in partnership with Capgemini and others around things like conversion, for example. We recognise that we have to partner with organisations like Capgemini and others because customers are asking for a rational strategy conversation – not just a technology strategy – about moving their business. We’re also looking at BPO options with Capgemini and some other organisations. We’ll never be a BPO provider but we recognise that we need to help facilitate our customers in this. We are also looking for strategies that make sense for the smaller players. Again, we are working with organisations like other SIs because it’s never the software licence that causes you the problem, it’s the delivery. So we’re looking for ways to create jump starts for smaller companies. We recognise that we have to help you have an incremental strategy. Unfortunately there’s no magic bullet at this point. But we do recognise that we are not a software provider that can just push it off to you and say, “go and spend millions of dollars to deliver it.” We need to provide an incremental strategy.

alfred flokstra, capgemini: We would love to embark on those big transformation projects that typically take three to five years. We usually start with ‘scan-focus-act’ activities – zoom in on one part of people change or technology change. We want to steer away from a ‘classic’ time and material model. More and more we want to share the risk with you. When we do larger programs we set KPIs beforehand and we measure them along the road. And basically, if we do a good job you pay us and if we do a really good job you pay us a premium. If we don’t do a good job we have to talk. We try to steer away from programs with a significant upfront capital expenditure to a more fluid change program which fits the operational expenditure. And together we determine where we start. Is it a technology part? Do we need to look at the people first? Who do we need to approach first? And what is the desired outcome? We have an environment called the accelerated solutions environment, which is a ‘business challenge pressure cooker’ where we actually solve a certain issue in three days. We sit together with senior staff

and stakeholders and have several iterations around the issue in different groups and then come up with a widely supported solution in three days, where a similar outcome would normally take much longer.

matt pancino, suncorp: It always encourages me to hear vendors talk about flexibility and understanding, and how we need to be faster because traditionally it hasn’t been that way. Realistically, we can only achieve flexibility if we have partners who are aligned commercially and culturally to our business. It’s not commercial arrangements alone that enables that to happen. daniel calleJa, onepath: Many of us have legacy systems. There is a certain level you could get to in terms of getting data out so that it can be used for a new class of hybridised underwriter claims. How can you help us with that? You talked about almost a lay-by plan where we could do some group concepts and pay for it later through numbers of policies renewed or generated. But there’s almost a low water mark that you need to get to first. And that’s quite hard for me as a technologist to sell to my customers.

chuck Johnston, oracle: There are so many old systems weighing on top of the CIO – it is hard to be innovative while pulling that behind you. There is a certain point at which you have to start but there is going to have to be a serious pot of gold for an organisation to really do legacy transformation. You have to prove the value in transformational change. One of the things we can do to help our customers is an assessment of value that can help determine the right path ahead. It’s easy if you’ve got a new core unit link product that you want to move out. It’s also easy if you’ve got a system that is literally going to shred itself and it becomes not an economic issue but a risk management issue. So if you’ve got those, you then have your test to value that initiative. The other way we can help you is through our customer base – which has become very open, particularly internationally. Having discussions with so many customers and making connections at the business leadership level is another powerful tool that we’re happy to help with because it profits us and our customers. But it is hard to change, and some small companies just don’t have the critical mass to make strategic projects work and manage risk. We’re working with some small partners to create some jump start programs around transformation. But there are certain parts of the business that literally have to wait for a compelling event to change.

“Realistically, we can only achieve flexibility if we have partners who are aligned commercially and culturally to our business.” matt pancino, suncorp

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Trends and Opportunities in Customer Centricity tIM dawSon, MICroSoft: The financial services industry has reached an inflection point. Three factors drive this: we now live in a connected, ‘social’ world; customers have lost trust in the industry; and we face significant demographic changes. In light of these factors the industry knows it needs to get closer to their customers. Customer centricity is a term which may have been over used, but it is still a powerful paradigm, particularly given the challenges associated with running a financial services business today. These businesses face a range of challenges: funding costs for the lending business, the commoditisation of products, new competitors and demanding, more knowledgeable customers. The notion of getting closer to the customer

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and putting the customer viewpoint in the middle of everything you do is a critical part of the conversation today for improving customer satisfaction while growing revenue. But is this really the answer? How have you seen success in changing the way you do your business? Or is this just another holy grail that we’re all chasing that may not help increase satisfaction or continue to grow business?

Mark MCCrIndle, MCCrIndle reSearCh: When we think about customer centricity we start with the solutions side and think about the technology. But it is difficult to think long term regarding technology solutions in 10 or 20 years. So technology has

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Top row (left to right): Cathy Gadd, Head of Product & Marketing, Macquarie Group; Mark McCrindle, Principal, McCrindle Research; Tim Dawson, Industry Manager, Financial Services, Microsoft; Melinda Livingstone, Head of Growth Strategy, Colonial First State; Andrew Murrell, General Manager Channel Marketing, Commonwealth Bank; Felicity Nicholson, Head of Marketing – Platforms & Investment, MLC; Bottom row (left to right): Tony Forward, Chief Information Officer, BT Financial Group; Dennis Bice, Chief Executive – Retail, Bendigo & Adelaide Bank; Vinita McNabb, Head of Distribution – Insurance, MLC; Sam Plowman, Executive General Manager Direct Banking, NAB; Sascha Hunt, Head of Digital & Direct, BT Financial Group; Christian Spagnardi, Director Financial Services & Insurance, Microsoft; Gerard McDermott, Executive General Manager Direct Distribution, Administration & Servicing – Commercial Insurance, Suncorp. The executives featured in this roundtable editorial held the positions at the time of publication.

implications even beyond the solutions side. It starts to change the psychology of customers and how they want their solutions and how they engage with the providers around them. The psychology is influenced by something further that pushes the time horizon out even more – demography. If we want to plan our businesses and think about financial services, 10, 20, 30 years in advance, the only starting point we can have is demography. We can plan for what decades in the future hold by looking at those younger generations and how they are being raised. We’re all aware of the headline figures – we have a national population of 22.5 million people. But since 1983 we’ve increased our national population by more than 50 per cent. From 1983 our average age has increased from 29 to 37. In addition, the life stages of marriage and starting families have been pushed back by six or seven years over that same period of time. So when it comes to the demography, we have changed more than ever and that has implications

in terms of who our customers are and the demands they have. There are three key issues that highlight the customer centric world in which we live. The first is diversity. Australia is more diverse than it has ever been. One in four of us weren’t born here. We have a wider age range of customers to engage now because people are living longer, and working longer and they are active as investors and on the retail banking side for longer. We have cultural diversity, age diversity and general life role diversity. So the customer segments are far more complex and diverse than they were just a few decades ago. The second key issue is population mobility. We churn more frequently today than ever before. Consider population growth rates by state. Western Australia and Queensland have more than twice the population growth rates of some of the southern states, highlighting internal migration. We are seeing a shift to the West and to the North during this resources boom. w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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“People in Australia are more empowered today than ever before through technology.” Mark Mccrindle, Mccrindle research

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We move home more frequently than ever. It’s harder to attract and to retain those customers because of that geographical mobility. Just one generation ago in Australia the average person stayed seven years per house. Today in some cities we have a median geographical tenure of five years. So we are staying less frequently in our homes, and geographical mobility is higher. Vocational mobility is also higher. In 1970 the average person stayed 12 years per company, or per employer. Today we stay on average four years. So there’s higher geographical churn, and with that vocational churn. We can’t just define people by the 20th century segments into which we’ve placed our customers, because those roles have very much changed. We have just completed a study looking at the changing roles of men, particularly generation Y fathers, as they move into the parenting role. We found that less than half of today’s fathers know how to fix a leaky tap, repair a punctured bike tyre or change the oil in the car. Half have never done those things or don’t know how to do those things. They have a different approach to life. And yet more than half of them can change a nappy, cook a meal and do the family grocery shop. That demonstrates the changing roles of fathers in Australian households. The third key issue is empowerment. People in Australia are more empowered today than ever before through technology. It’s an eBay world, where the buyer rates the seller. Top consumer websites are those where the users create the content. And the users go there to see what other people are posting on YouTube or profiles on Facebook. It is not so much about what the experts are saying but how peer groups are influencing. That’s what social media is all about and that’s what social validation is all about and it applies to the customer decision as well. When it comes time to determine which banking product they go with or which financial service they engage with, they focus on what the other people are recommending. That’s the power of the customer today. And that power is growing as we look to the new generations because generations Y and Z are even more technologically savvy and they’re even more financially experienced and financially endowed at younger ages. So this asymmetrical power – this empowerment of customers – is growing as the next generations come through. I want to consider three more words related to generational issues as we think about the emerging and even more empowered generations of customers today. What does it mean and what do we need to keep in mind as the Gen Ys and the Gen Zs become mainstream customers, wealth accumulators, key managers and earners and clients of yours?

The three Rs are important here: we have to keep it relevant. We have to communicate in ways that make sense to them and provide solutions that make sense to them. Generation Y is more mobile than any other generation. Banks are recording triple digit growth in smartphone transaction volumes amidst a boom in customer use of mobile banking. NAB says it has experienced 200 per cent growth in mobile bank usage since May. CommBank says online transactions represent nine per cent of all transactions. There has been massive growth through new technology because of the change in our attitudes and we’re going to see that even more with generations Y and Z. So keeping it relevant is key. That is true from a communications perspective with the customers as well. We’ve got to speak within that narrow bandwidth of interest that these generations and customers today have. The second R is responsive. Understand that who generation Y is today is not necessarily who they are in a decade. We are who we are based on our life stage as much as our particular generation. Different generations will move through different roles – they’ll reinvent themselves. We have to be responsive to the changes of the generations as they move through those different life stages. They have been empowered by technology and we have to be responsive to their world and to their life changes, to their changing roles, to changing expectations as they go. And the third R is relational. Consumers are engaging through technologies but that doesn’t mean that we need to keep the relationship out of it. That relationship might not mean that they’re going to engage with us in a branch between 9:30 and 4:30. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use technology to have that personal relationship. Look at social media. It’s all about real people, but they are using technology as the interface for timeless relational connections. So whether it’s expert on demand, or the banker button, whether it’s using new technologies to meet needs face-to-face, it’s still about the relational foundation. American writer John Maxwell says, if you’re leading and no-one’s following then you’re just out for a walk. That’s a good reminder that relationship is key to leadership. It’s not about the techniques and the tools, it’s about the relationship. If we’re communicating and they’re not listening, we’re just talking to ourselves. From a demographic perspective, customers are more diverse, they’re more mobile, and asymmetrical power drives them. From a generational perspective we’re going to see the need to be more relevant, more responsive and more relational in the years ahead as a more empowered customer emerges.

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tIM dawSon, MICroSoft: What are the biggest challenges the three Rs pose and where are the opportunities in those challenges? For example, because customers are more mobile will they be less loyal to you as a financial organisation?

Mark MCCrIndle, MCCrIndle reSearCh: The opportunity is that people make decisions in terms of engaging with solutions providers at points of change or transition in their lives. The good news is that there are more points of transition in their lives. There are more life stages crammed in, more geographical moves, more vocational moves, and more life role moves. That creates opportunities to re-engage with them. There’s an associated threat, though. Because when they’re moving on they’re not as sticky; there isn’t that loyalty factor, so they may drop us. But you need to take the opportunity presented by those more frequent transition points and be part of the conversation at those shifts. From an opportunity perspective, the lifetime value to you of this generation has never been greater. They will be in the workforce longer and they will earn more throughout their life. They’ll have more in investments from superannuation. They will just churn through a lot of earnings in their life. If we just take our 20th century categories and segmentation models and apply it today we will miss the nuances and the sophistication of this generation. Take social economic profiling. It is defined by three factors: income, career and education. That can change within a five-year period with Generation Y. You can get someone who has not even finished Year 12, and is just emerging into their earning life. From a career perspective, they might be lower down the rungs, yet within a few years they complete a degree, they’re earning fulltime salary and then their career prospects massively increase in a short period of time. The changes are quicker and the jumps are greater so we should not just define them in that traditional sense.

MelInda lIvIngStone, ColonIal fIrSt State: Gen Y is more educated, but very busy; they aren’t necessarily interested in our products. Is there an interest in simpler products as a consequence?

Mark MCCrIndle, MCCrIndle reSearCh: Consider superannuation. They are forced legislatively into super but they don’t take ownership of it because it’s not that critical to their immediate life. However financial superannuation organisations can connect with them by providing some of the needs that they do have right now, which might be a solution to deal with

HECS debt or car loans or credit card solutions. You need simple, short-term solutions but you also need to build an integrated and sophisticated relationship with them over time.

SaM PlowMan, nab: There are many approaches to explain behaviour and patterns, beyond demographics. It seems to be much more relevant to look at things from a behavioural point of view. I sat beside a man in his 60s on a flight yesterday, who was one of the most proficient online users I’ve ever met. The key question is how do we get more in tune with behaviours, across all generations?

Mark MCCrIndle, MCCrIndle reSearCh: Generational segmentation is just one approach. Within those generations you’ve got many side graphic segments. But in the same way there are attitudinal segments that run right across the generations. Getting those deeper customer insights has never been more important. It is also important to understand that a category is a dynamic category. We might have defined a particular psychographic, but they’ll change their life stages as they move. Our consumer insights have to be more sophisticated, and we have to move with our customers so that intelligence grows. Mass customisation is key for them; understanding who they are and what they value. Gaining that intelligence over time so that you’ve got a relationship with them and walked a journey with them demonstrates that you can help them provide solutions as they move through those different roles.

“The key question is how do we get more in tune with behaviours, across all generations?” saM plowMan, naB

andrew Murrell, CoMMonwealth bank: We can all predict based on lists, demographics and psychographics, but every day we have customers coming en masse to our websites, showing us their behaviour. But how do you respond to that behaviour?

tonY forward, bt fInanCIal grouP: We have a really interesting problem in financial services – there is a lack of customer trust as a consequence of the GFC. Suddenly people don’t trust financial services anymore. In some countries, like Iceland, this is particularly pronounced, but it’s even happening here. In Australia we’ve got the paradox that although financial services did not trigger a recession, and are regarded as one of the more responsible in the world: and even though the effects of the GFC here were mild we’ve got an unprecedented level of public denunciations of banks going on. This is hurting the reputation of all firms in the sector. Is this turning up in your research and how do you think that might play out? w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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Mark MCCrIndle, MCCrIndle reSearCh: If there’s no trust there’s no relationship. But we have found we should not equate churn with a lack of trust or product relationship. Let’s apply it to a workforce. We have a voluntary turnover rate hovering around 10 per cent but it could be much higher in some industries. We find if employers have a great relationship with those staff members they might leave, but they might come back. It’s not that there’s no great relationship there, it’s just a function of the fluidity of modern life. When that trust is there, it may not mean that you have that customer for life, but if they do leave they may come back again. If there is no trust, then there’s no hope for anything at all. So definitely it’s the starting point, it’s fundamental.

tIM dawSon, MICroSoft: The best way to build trust is via the intimacy of long relationships. But when you’re dealing with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of customers, it is very expensive to have that one-on-one relationship. Westpac has made its branch managers highly visible and posted their mobile phone numbers at their branch, trying to build up that relationship. That’s one way to do it. But is there a way that you can efficiently and cost effectively build that trust relationship with every one of your customers?

dennIS bICe, bendIgo & adelaIde bank: It is “In that small window of opportunity you have to build that trust.” dennis Bice, Bendigo & adelaide Bank

challenging because the role managers play now is increasingly important, even though you might only see your customer once a month or once every six months. In that small window of opportunity you have to build that trust. We spend a fair bit of time on building trust in the broader-based community as well. The model we built around community bank is basically that. We focus on trying to keep that connectedness to all levels of customers and then being able to demonstrate the value that you’re adding back into your community. While the banking sector hasn’t enjoyed good publicity over the last three years, in Australia it is quite good. It just doesn’t feel that way at the moment.

CathY gadd, MaCquarIe grouP: Globally a lot of banks have seriously damaged public trust particularly over the past few years, with good reason given what has transpired and the need for governments to step in. However, Australia and our financial sector have come through the GFC in pretty good shape. I think the issue is banks are not liked, more than they are not trusted. There’s a national pastime of ‘bank bashing’, and it ebbs and flows. There was a degree of gratitude as we went through the height of the GFC that we had stability

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and tighter regulation so we didn’t go through the same trauma and pain that many of our international counterparts did. But the sentiment soon changed again as markets began to normalise.

andrew Murrell, CoMMonwealth bank: Yes, that’s what we see coming through in our research. People want to like us but we make it really hard for them sometimes. And all banks are bastards, but we trust you bastards.

tIM dawSon, MICroSoft: The power of the internet and the ubiquity of information have made customers more knowledgeable and therefore more demanding. But recent research indicated that over 50 per cent of those surveyed couldn’t answer simple questions such as their current mortgage rate. Yet over 80 per cent of respondents considered themselves above average in terms of their financial management capabilities. But not everybody can be above average. So maybe there’s also a delusion involved; a dichotomy where some people are knowledgeable and demanding, but then there are others who think they’re knowledgeable but they’re actually not. How do you reconcile that? SaSCha hunt, bt fInanCIal grouP: We spend a lot of time on customer centricity and getting close to the customer. We spend a lot of time out with our customers, watching them in their own environment, trying to get a feel for what they do. If you ask a customer how they manage their money or how well they think they do those things, a lot of the times they’ll say that they do it particularly well. When you ask them to show you how you use your banking or show us how you use this product, the outcome can be surprising. The challenge is how you provide tools and services for customers, and communicate with them in a way that doesn’t come across as patronising. How do you make sure those tools are relevant for a particular time and need? Many clients want mobile devices with a whole lot of downloadable apps but if you ask them how would they use that they are unsure. So the big challenge is where is the return on investment for the development? How much do you invest in emerging technologies? Are people really expecting us to cater to every device or every new form of technology coming out, or are they happy with the basics to just keep evolving? Mark MCCrIndle, MCCrIndle reSearCh: There is definitely ‘expectation inflation’ because from a consumer electronics perspective, there’s always

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newer, better, cheaper, and faster products every six months. They take that same expectation and want that translated to other areas in their life. And in some areas that speed just cannot be matched. More is more might apply technologically but it doesn’t apply in the built environment, and it doesn’t apply in catchment. From a research perspective, you have to be careful about what customers are the experts on. They can certainly talk about what they want, they can talk about their usage, but they’re not the best people to ask what products and services we should provide because that’s beyond their domain knowledge. Sometimes they don’t know what they want and other times they think they want something but if we provide it they won’t necessarily take it up. Asking them questions is the starting point, but keep it within the context of usage and attitudes.

statistics in front of customers, they may agree they need coverage but they still won’t act on it. We need to move it from a head issue to a heart issue and that requires more of the case study approach. If you move it to the emotional space it becomes personal. And that does start to have an impact.

gerard MCderMott, SunCorP: The discussion around product advancement and what customers need really resonates with me. Only 30 per cent of small business owners have business interruption insurance, which is an absolutely critical cover to preserve their livelihood, but when they’re asked do they believe they’re adequately insured and is their business protected across all adverse eventualities, 80 per cent believe it is.

SaM PlowMan, nab: Historically, the financial services industry has been guilty of confusing our customers with product variants, offers and features – which has seen the emergence of sites like iSelect, Rate City and Mozo. These businesses simply feed off customer confusion, created by an industry which is driving opportunities for other people to come and filter out the noise.

vInIta MCnabb, MlC: That is similar to the situation with life insurance – people protect their assets more than they tend to protect themselves. Only 2.7 per cent of Australians have trauma insurance, which is the insurance that you’re most likely to claim on.

CathY gadd, MaCquarIe grouP: There are things people know they can be doing and things they actually do. We all know you should eat a certain amount of fruit and veg every day and drink plenty of water, but how many of us actually do that? It’s a little bit the same with financial fitness.

Mark MCCrIndle, MCCrIndle reSearCh: We are more educated, so we know everything cognitively about how we exercise, and about what we should or shouldn’t have in terms of financial due diligence and risk management. But are we acting on it? Logically you’d have to say if we’re gaining knowledge but not changing our actions then there’s a greater gap than previously. But part of the problem is that we engage in arguments rationally when they need to be more emotionally driven. Take insurance as an example. If we are just putting data, contents and

SaSCha hunt, bt fInanCIal grouP: How do you use technology and communications to connect to that emotional part when we talk about products? Another issue is how you create that emotional link while trying to speed up an insurance process. That’s one of the big challenges we’re looking at.

gerard MCderMott, SunCorP: With the growing use of online, and the advent of commoditisation, companies are focused on prices and being competitive. But what we’re talking about here is value.

ChrIStIan SPagnardI, MICroSoft: How do we take the power of the consumer and use that not as a product but a go-to-market to educate and get customers to come on board? We were once in a business where we’d hand out fliers. But we’re now in a world where social media is where people receive their information. How do we transform from a transactional business into a customer-centric business using social media as a tool, and how are we geared up for it as businesses in terms of our marketing strategy?

“People protect their assets more than they tend to protect themselves.” vinita McnaBB, Mlc

SaM PlowMan, nab: In the time NAB has been in business, 150 years, we’ve become pretty successful in transactional banking but we’ve got a big job to do in terms of building relationships with our customers. The big paradigm shift is social media. The peer-to-peer and community-based nature of social media is undoubtedly changing the way people discern what is right for them, with many consumers preferring to ask their community before they’ll listen to a banker. The modern consumer is more demanding than ever and holds a lot more power. Unfortunately, it’s new, complex, and a challenge for many businesses to understand. w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

ro u n dta b l e // C uS t o M e r C e n t r I C I t Y

andrew Murrell, CoMMonwealth bank: The first step is understanding where conversations are taking place within the social media paradigm. Then you need to figure out how you might interact with those conversations. You may earn the ability to do that, but you’ve got to tread carefully. The real challenge for us is how we become social businesses and not just play in the social media space. That is about bringing all of that community into your own sites and your own world and interacting with them. In 10 years we will see financial services websites evolve to become social beasts that take on feedback and where customers can create product and interact with you. But having a social media strategy is not just having a Facebook or a Twitter presence. How do you then add in customer information and what you do with that IP? We all have that information – the number of people going online to our websites far outweighs the people going into our branches these days. How do you recognise that person and go back to what you know about them and deal with them, whether it is interacting with them on your website or social media? It comes back to being relevant, personal and emotional.

SaSCha hunt, bt fInanCIal grouP: A new term “The real challenge for us is how we become social businesses and not just play in the social media space.” andrew Murrell, coMMonwealth Bank

is emerging – we no longer talk about social media but about earned media. That makes it part of the marketing mix as opposed to just being social. We have to earn it, and we have to spend a lot of time listening before we earn it. Mark, do you have any insights into financial services in the earned or social media space? Are you seeing any shifts in consumers’ sentiment towards financial services providers?

Mark MCCrIndle, MCCrIndle reSearCh: Yes, definitely. The first big challenge is cognitive dissonance; people believe one thing but behave another way. The second is the issue of information overload. Both of those are only added to by transactional information, but both are solved by social interaction. Friends can push back and say things like, “you believe this but you’re saying that – what’s going on?” It’s the same with information overload. Studies show that the more information you give someone, it will come to a point where they push it all to one side and ask a mate. An engagement context rather than just the transactional can help at that point.

tIM dawSon, MICroSoft: One of the challenges I perceive is product commoditisation within financial

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services. It’s harder and harder to charge premium prices for your products or your services, because everybody has them. Consider Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) as an example. Who needs an expensive managed fund when you can get the benefit of one that trades any time you want it for a very low cost. So how do you become more personally differentiated with your customer at a price that both can accept?

MelInda lIvIngStone, ColonIal fIrSt State: When it comes to investment products, clients want the opportunity to get a good, diversified portfolio at a really good price. So a client customer might want to use an ETF for the bulk of their portfolio, but you might be able to give them a satellite product that gives them some alpha or something they can’t otherwise get. You also have to look at working with channels like financial planners that deliver solutions that are tailored for clients and work with them to design products that meet the needs of their clients.

vInIta MCnabb, MlC: The days of differentiating yourself from a product perspective are long gone – it’s really about value and relationship now. The real issue for us is how to keep a client for a longer period of time. We all focus on cross-selling – that is, offering more and creating more value through different needs rather than just focusing on one thing. Financial planners have gone down this path as well. They’re no longer specialists, they cover a range of products through their businesses now. felICItY nICholSon, MlC: A lot of our campaigns now are about rewarding clients that have been with us for a longer period of time. And they’re really telling us that is what they want. They will go somewhere else if another provider is prepared to treat them better over a period of time.

ChrIStIan SPagnardI, MICroSoft: There are some questions about customer loyalty and how hard it is for a customer to leave a bank or an insurance agent because they’ve got multiple products with them. How would you run your business if there was account number portability? Would we transact with that customer differently because it would be so much easier for them to leave? CathY gadd, MaCquarIe grouP: It’s an interesting question. Customers have to believe another provider is different from their existing one to want to move, and there’s a strong belief in the market that all financial institutions are alike – particularly the four majors. We see ourselves as being quite different

C uS t o M e r C e n t r I C I t Y // ro u n dta b le

from each other but in a consumer’s mind they see us all as quite similar. Often the consumer doesn’t see that point of differentiation.

SaSCha hunt, bt fInanCIal grouP: It’s actually not that hard to move anymore. Getting a credit card takes you a few seconds online. The banks are very good at fostering those types of relationships. The minute you set up your credit card they’ll help you set up other things. I don’t think it’s that hard to change banks; it’s just whether you can be bothered.

tonY forward, bt fInanCIal grouP: As an industry there are so many more things we could do to improve the efficiency of the industry and give customers better service, but we are so tied up with fighting each other for market share that these things sometimes don’t happen. That is the nature of competition, I guess: we all get out and we try to win customers, and win loyalty, and improve our own shareholder returns. There is a big discussion about account portability at the moment and we’re all on the receiving end of that, like it or not. You need a catalyst to get things done: sometimes that’s industry bodies and sometimes it has to be government. So we welcome government initiatives, for example, that will reduce lost super and provide efficient superannuation contributions payments from any employee to any fund.

SaM PlowMan, nab: The financial services industry has a huge opportunity to be more innovative and build for the future. While we have a huge job to ensure our business operates as smoothly as possible, it’s important to broaden our focus and see how we can change the game, working with partners like Microsoft and Apple. We need to understand changing consumer behaviours and start to map products and services that leverage new technologies. As an industry, we don’t have to be the pioneer of innovation we just have to be a fast follower.

andrew Murrell, CoMMonwealth bank: We’ve never had to deal with the speed of delivery and the rate of change in the emergence of consumer channels as we do today. It’s a very interesting time to be doing what we’re all doing.

Mark MCCrIndle, MCCrIndle reSearCh: We’re in the world of the early adopter – everyone wants to be an early adopter. If you look at a normal bell curve of adoption, we used to identify seven per cent as early adopters, but now everyone wants to be an

‘aspirational’ early adopter. In terms of reinvention and freshness, you have to keep on the cutting edge to attract not just the actual early adopters but the aspirational early adopters. You also need to keep in mind that we’re in a world of massive contrarianism. People like to push back on what’s big. We are in this world where it is about individuality. No-one wants to be a conformist, so if we become too big or mainstream we become bland.

ChrIStIan SPagnardI, MICroSoft: If you look at it as an alternative platform, digital or online has actually reinvented some offline channels. Television has now become a place to tell a brand story rather than flog product, driving viewers to online assets for more content. But when communicating to your customers you can’t beat a nicely written letter or personal call – because that is about being connected and responsive. Online also reintroduces the feel of community. You now go online not only for mainstream media, but anything unique or local. People still like to get the local community paper in their local area. So if you’re a local advertiser you would be more inclined to advertise in the local paper rather than mainstream. That has also helped create that community feel and keep that emotional touch.

SaSCha hunt, bt fInanCIal grouP: What is Microsoft betting big on over the next three to five years? tIM dawSon, MICroSoft: In this new connected, ‘social’ world Microsoft sees its strength in how we help people connect and collaborate better across their work and personal lives. We’ll enable this in a couple of ways: Firstly, we see ubiquitous computing ahead, much driven through the power of cloud computing, chip speeds and data storage capabilities. Secondly, the notion of a natural user interface is evolving and how we interact with computers will take many different forms. What we see now are touch devices, smart phones, tablets and tabletops. You’re going to see much more touch computing ahead. You’re also going to see better screens, very light, and very flexible, and anything can become a screen. Plus, people can control these screens with various different gestures. This is of course happening with gaming computers already. Finally, voice is getting to the point where it can work pretty well. So touch, gestures, voice and ubiquitous screens are going to drive more and more capabilities.

“We welcome government initiatives... that will reduce lost super and provide efficient superannuation contributions payments from any employee to any fund.” tony Forward, Bt Financial group

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who’s who They Are AusTrAliA’s leAding finAnciAl services execuTives, shAping The fuTure of invesTmenT And sTrATegy. here, They shAre Their insighTs on The impAcT of emerging Technologies And The key Trends defining TodAy’s mArkeT. edited By patrice giBBons & melanie timBrell

QA &

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a nn e w e at h e rs ton // w h o’ s w h o Q& a

anne Weatherston chief informATion officer, anZ

Fst Media: ANZ has embarked on a largescale IT revamp. What strategies are bringing this transformation into effect; and what have been the business benefits thus far? weatherston: It’s early days but we now have a new operating model in place and our technology roadmap locked down. This will see us increase the level of standardisation, efficiency, and consolidation, which will ultimately improve the level of service and

consistency that we offer our customers no matter where in the world they bank with us. The reality is that if you are trying to build a super-regional bank you simply can’t build it as a series of separate silos. It’s not a model that any other bank in the world has adopted because at the end of the day it simply won’t deliver the right outcomes.

Fst Media: What are your top IT priorities for the next 12 to 18 months? weatherston: Rolling out our technology roadmap will be the major technology priority for the bank. I’ve often used the analogy that we are at the top of the hill but with a mountain still to climb. We’ve raised expectations at the executive level of the bank, including that of our CEO, so we now need to deliver and execute. w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

w h o’ s w h o Q& a // a n n e w e at h e rs ton

Fst Media: ANZ is continuing its push into the Asia Pacific region. How are you driving a cohesive IT roadmap across a region with varying market maturity? weatherston: If you want to be a global or super-regional bank then you need to be engineered towards global outcomes. Standardised processes are very important in a modern world where customers are now demanding a much faster speed of response and a much more cohesive customer experience. I actually think that ANZ has the opportunity to use technology to differentiate ourselves. Very few banks that operate on a global basis are as lean as we are, because actually in the non-Australian space we have no legacy systems to hold us back. We have an opportunity to architect something that is very component based, very flexible, scalable, and very usable. I find this kind of flexibility very exciting.

Fst Media: How does ANZ’s technology team in Bangalore fit into the overall picture?

we will be building an interface that gives our customers a complete picture of all the financial products they have with AnZ.

from a security and availability perspective. Regulators across the world are increasingly taking note of developments in the use of external IT services, particularly in relation to business continuity and privacy. In fact, many countries don’t allow hosting of technology services outside their borders and as a bank with operations in 32 countries this is something we have to take into consideration.

Fst Media: How will your customers benefit from ANZ’s major online banking upgrade; and what business advantages are expected?

Fst Media: ANZ has pioneered Person-toPerson (P2P) payments in Australia with the goMoney iPhone application. What’s next for mobile and smartphone banking at ANZ?

weatherston: This upgrade is about making sure our customers have a seamless experience across all our channels, whether it be internet, mobile, branch or the call centre. We will be building an interface that gives our customers a complete picture of all the financial products they have with ANZ and allows them to perform the full range of transactions on these accounts. It’s about making banking more convenient for our customers and ultimately continuing to improve the customer experience.

weatherston: The reason ANZ goMoney has been so successful is that it provides customers with a convenient and easy-touse mobile banking application. We’ve been delighted with the uptake and feedback from our customers and it’s certainly reinforced our original belief that mobile will be one of, if not the key banking channel in the immediate future.

Fst Media: What are your views on cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS); and is there a place for these technologies within ANZ’s IT strategy? weatherston: Cloud and SaaS will obviously continue to evolve and mature as a technology solution. However any implementation within ANZ would be limited to a private cloud at this stage. We certainly won’t be looking at cloud or SaaS for our core systems but we will continue to watch this space closely, particularly 52

Fst Media: In your opinion, are there any IT functions too critical to outsource and/or offshore? weatherston: You can’t offshore or outsource engagement with the business. If you don’t get this activity right from the outset you will find technology operating in a silo, and solving problems not necessarily on the radar of the business. Offshoring and outsourcing are both emotive issues but if they are implemented properly and governed effectively they can both potentially play an important role in building capability and improving productivity.

weatherston: ANZ led the way in establishing an IT operations hub in Bangalore more than 20 years ago. Our centre in Bangalore has become a significant competitive advantage for us and will continue to play a strategic role as part of ANZ’s overall super-regional delivery capability requirements. Fst Media: As CIO of one of Australia’s largest banks, what skill-sets do you seek in future IT protégés? weatherston: There is a significant shortage of IT executives in Australia that can work side-by-side with the business. People have been talking about the importance of aligning IT to the business for as long as they have been talking about technology – but that’s a by-product of a lot of companies struggling with the issue. If you look at some of the successful IT leaders they have often combined their IT careers with business experience or even non-IT roles and this is because they can look at issues from a business perspective and not just a technology problem. Fst Media: What advice can you give to IT executives pitching a project at a board level? weatherston: You have to pitch technology at their level and any technology solution needs to start with what is the business outcome you are trying to deliver. Once you’ve answered that question, and only when you’ve answered that question, can you start talking about the technology that will solve the problem. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? weatherston: It will be a satisfying legacy to lead a world-class technology team that plays a critical role in enabling the bank to achieve its vision as a major super-regional player. We have a long way to go but I’m confident we have the right operating model and roadmap to make it happen.

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5/04/11 11:32 AM

w h o’ s w h o Q& a // b o b M c k i n non

Bob mcKinnon group execuTive, Technology, Westpac BanKing group

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Improvements in infrastructure include the refurbishment and rationalisation of existing data centres and building a new data centre in western Sydney. We are also developing stronger capabilities in the areas of enterprise testing, enterprise integration and enterprise information management. With regard to St. George product platforms, our recent focus has been on moving St. George onto modernised enterprise cards and global payments platforms. Once we complete work on building out the technology to support the launch of the recently announced Bank of Melbourne, we will resume our work on modernising St. George’s key retail banking product platform, Hogan. We are now two years into this transformation program and while it will take a number of years to complete, we are already seeing significant benefits, particularly in terms of new or improved business capability. One example is our recently rolled-out contact centre platform, which has had a major impact on both productivity and customer experience. Our contact centre net promoter scores have lifted demonstrably. Moving St. George onto our new enterprise global payments and cards platforms is bringing benefits to our customers while allowing us to capture synergies and simplify our legacy technology environment.

Fst Media: Westpac Banking Group (Westpac)’s three-year IT agenda and Strategic Investment Priorities (SIPs) focus on the customer experience, productivity and reliability. What specific initiatives are bringing this transformation into effect?

Fst Media: You have indicated one of the challenges of your role is maintaining the reliability of Westpac’s technology, particularly during a period of significant change. How are you approaching this challenge?

Mckinnon: The SIPs have been designed

Mckinnon: The reliability of technology

with the Group strategy of building deep customer relationships and offering our customers choice with a strong family of brands in mind. They are prioritising the renewal of Westpac customer platforms and infrastructure and the modernisation of St. George Bank (St. George) product platforms. With regard to Westpac customer platforms and infrastructure, some examples include new branch teller and contact centre platforms and a new collections servicing platform. We are also well advanced in the development of our next generation internet banking platform.

is fundamentally important to any financial services organisation. We manage it through a structured enterprise-wide program with dedicated funding. This program prioritises its activities using strict risk management disciplines, ensuring that funding is allocated proactively to the areas where it will do the most good. Over the last two years, this has involved significant remediation and refresh of infrastructure. It has also involved the building of capability, particularly in change and problem management, and the introduction of a culture of discipline in our service management teams.

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // b o b M c k i n non

Fst Media: Westpac is constructing its own private cloud. What business benefits are expected; and are there plans to move into a common public cloud? Mckinnon: Over the last 18 months we have experimented quite extensively with private cloud and are now focused on both building out our own cloud environment and working with key suppliers to leverage their cloud capabilities on an exclusive basis. With regard to our own environment, an important part of this is streamlining the cloud computing delivery processes and workflows necessary to ensure a flexible yet simple private cloud. Getting this right is critical to our ability to quickly provision development, test and production environments. Currently the predominant use of our cloud environment is testing, but this will progressively change as we move through this year. With regard to leveraging the cloud capabilities of others we are currently focussed on collaboration services. While the public cloud proposition and economies of scale appear to be attractive, we have sufficient scale to support our own private cloud for most of our infrastructure and application needs. Also, public cloud offerings can be problematic for financial services organisations given regulatory and risk-related concerns regarding data security and compliance. There are also concerns regarding the ability to transfer large amounts of data in and out of the public cloud quickly, cheaply and effectively. In a nutshell, we feel that public clouds still have a way to go before they are mature enough for use by large financial services organisations like Westpac.

Fst Media: Why has Westpac placed its Hogan core banking overhaul on hold until 2014? Mckinnon: Work on our Hogan platform was never actually put on hold. Rather, over the last 12 months, all our Hogan resources have been totally dedicated to preparing for the recently announced launch of our new regional bank, the Bank of Melbourne. Like St. George and BankSA, Bank of Melbourne will run on the Hogan platform, which will

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public clouds still have a way to go before they are mature enough for use by large financial services organisations.

and more customers using mobile devices for social networking, we are investigating ways to better engage with our customers through channels such as Facebook and Twitter.

Fst Media: Westpac has renewed its technology services contract with IBM spanning the next five years. What has been fundamental to the success of this relationship, which started 10 years ago? Mckinnon: Like all relationships,

deliver it real-time retail banking capabilities. The time taken to build our new bank in Victoria has been relatively short given the enormity of the task. This has only been possible because we have a great technology platform to work with. Once the new Bank of Melbourne is launched later this year, we will continue to modernise the Hogan platform. Initially this will be done for our regional brands and then we will focus on Westpac.

Fst Media: Westpac has significantly invested in mobile technology including Android, iPhone and iPad applications. How do you see the mobile channel evolving at Westpac in the next two to three years? Mckinnon: Since late 2009, mobile banking has very quickly become a mainstream channel for our customers. Currently more than 10 per cent of our internet banking visits come via mobile; we only see this increasing. In the case of St. George, this currently equates to more transactions via mobile than we would do in 55 branches. Through both our Westpac and St. George brands we have stayed at the forefront of releasing new capabilities to market and listening to our customers when it comes to new features and services. For example, St. George released its iPad app on the same day that the iPad was released in Australia last May. Going forward we will focus on more location-centric access to information and ensuring customers are able to do via their mobile device everything they currently do via their internet banking service. With more

confidence and trust are fundamental to success. Since 2008 both Westpac and IBM have worked hard to rebuild the confidence and trust between our two organisations. The work that IBM has done to help us improve the reliability of our systems has been a key contributor in this regard. Our two organisations work together as one team when it comes to service management and reliability. The ongoing success of our relationship is dependent on us continuing to work together in this way.

Fst Media: As one of Australia’s most experienced technology executives, what do you think it takes to be a successful CIO in today’s environment? Mckinnon: I have always worked on the basis that to be highly successful you must always surround yourself with the very best people; people who are not only brilliant individually, but who are also in the right role and like to work cohesively in a team environment. Another important factor to success as a CIO is making sure you keep up-to-date with what is happening in technology. It is moving faster now than ever before, with profound consequences for business models, markets, customers and employees.

Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? Mckinnon: As I have said many times before, I would like to be remembered for the people and the teams that I have brought together and for the things that they continue to achieve long after I have moved on.

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // a da M b e n n e t t

adam Bennett chief informATion officer, national australia BanK (naB)

Fst Media: National Australia Bank (NAB) recently joined the Open Data Centre Alliance, a global cloud computing advocacy group. What cloud-based IT initiatives are in the pipeline for the bank in the year ahead? bennett: There are polarised views on cloud computing: there are those who see it as the new frontier, and those who see it as a new name for an old idea. NAB is the only Australian company to join the Open Data Centre Alliance as a Steering Committee member. We intend to leverage this experience to determine the best way forward for cloud computing, not only for NAB but for the industry as a whole, while being considerate of the obligations we have to our customers and regulators. Fst Media: NAB’s core banking overhaul initiative, Next Generation (NextGen), is underway. How is this progressing; and what are the project’s key business objectives and deliverables?

bennett: The NextGen program continues to progress very well. NextGen will build a new banking platform that is a significant upgrade of all of our banking, finance and risk systems, processes, tools and distribution channels, and is designed to make it easier for our customers to deal with us and easier for our people to do their jobs. We will then progressively migrate customers to this platform. Release one is complete and included the implementation of UBank – that continues to grow and was awarded Best Online Savings Account 2010 by Money Magazine and recognised for innovation excellence at the 2010 Canstar Cannex Awards. Releases two and three will occur over the next three years. Fst Media: To what extent are you involved in developing the IT roadmap of NAB’s branchless, online term deposit service, UBank?

bennett: I was involved in the initial thinking that gave rise to UBank when I was GM Group Development for NAB in 2007. Now that I am CIO, I ensure that my team continues to play a critical part in maintaining the innovation that is critical to UBank’s continued success. I am very proud of the fact that UBank has become Australia’s tenth biggest deposit taker in only two years; is at the forefront of innovation across technology, process and social media; and is continuing to set new industry benchmarks. Fst Media: What lessons have been learned from NAB’s late 2010 technology outages; and what strategies have been put forth to improve this part of the business going forward? bennett: We are already in the process of implementing a number of programs that will enable our IT environment to become more simple, flexible and robust. The NextGen platform will build on this and replace ageing legacy systems and infrastructure and also provide many improvements to our systems. This transformation journey began in 2009 and was a response to the fact that our system – as is typical across our industry – required an upgrade. In some cases these programs will take a few years to complete. In relation to the issue you refer to, we also engaged a

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // a da M b e n n e t t

number of third party experts to review our environment and we will continue to employ any other necessary improvements and controls that are recommended by them.

Fst Media: NAB’s carbon neutrality achievement is supported by green IT initiatives such as technology collaboration and tri-generation data centre plants. How do you instil an acceptance and understanding for sustainable business and IT practices across such a large organisation? bennett: NAB committed to being carbon neutral in 2010 and worked very hard to do this. Taking a sustainable approach to managing our business is important, not only for the environment, but for the longterm growth and resilience of our business. I think it resonates with our people that saving power and money while doing something to assist the environment has a double dividend. We have been lucky at NAB to have the commitment of senior executives across all of our business units who personally got behind these programs to drive them forward. We have provided our people with opportunities to get involved to reduce their impact on the environment both at work and at home. I am personally very committed to leveraging my role to make a real and sustainable difference. I am proud of the fact that one of our most significant energy efficiency investments has been a tri-generation facility for one of our major technology data centres. It saves around 20,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year – this is equivalent to 1,400 households and is an overall reduction in NAB’s carbon footprint of 10 per cent. Fst Media: NAB has gained significant traction with its mobile channel. What do you see as the next frontier of mobile banking at NAB?

bennett: Our customers’ response to our iPhone and Android apps in direct channels has been fantastic. NAB mobile banking has seen 250 per cent growth in usage over the past six months, making it our fastest growing channel. We expect this evolution to rapidly continue and we will remain at the forefront of this technology. 60

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bennett: While online and mobile

Taking a sustainable approach to managing our business is important, not only for the environment, but for the long-term growth and resilience of our business.

At NAB we are continuing to experiment across the platforms’ capabilities – browser, apps, voice, Near Field Communications (NFC) etc – so that we can find solutions that will provide customers choice about how they want to interact. We are also looking at evolving and improving the mobile version of nab.com.au. When 4G mobile networks roll out in Australia new opportunities will be created to interact and communicate with customers. The capability of the devices will also be a big driver of change.

Fst Media: What are your top IT priorities for the next 12 to 18 months? bennett: We have very clear priorities in helping NAB get back to number one. As the function that provides technical support across NAB, we are focused on providing service delivery excellence to our colleagues and have developed a number of transformation programs that will simplify, improve and upgrade our processes and systems not just in technology but across all our operations support. We have outsourced the management of our infrastructure to IBM, which now manages our hosting and workplace environments across our NAB, MLC and NAB Wealth, Wholesale, Aviva and Advantage brands. Our network transformation will modernise our network to support improved capacity, lower costs and provide greater scalability. There is also a large piece of work underway on getting ready for NextGen. Fst Media: What emerging technologies do you feel are changing the face of retail banking?

channels will become even more important than they are today, particularly for transactional banking, I believe the impact of changing technologies will be different for each individual. For some, retail outlets will continue to be for more meaningful interactions, such as seeking financial advice. There is undoubtedly an expectation that connectedness, reliability and the ability to integrate information from different sources will become increasingly relevant; and already we are seeing a rise in the use of solutions such as Skype, wireless and social online media channels such as Facebook and so on.

Fst Media: As CIO, what steps do you take to ensure you consistently reconcile technology investment with NAB’s business priorities? bennett: Reconciling NAB’s business priorities with technology investment is always a balancing act that requires a solid understanding of where the business is headed and how best to shape the future systems landscape. I work with various governance forums to ensure that investment in new capabilities such as NextGen is appropriately balanced against investment that is critical for maintaining the stability of our existing systems. We have invested in a number of programs and will also be looking to better leverage the expertise of our investment in supplier partnerships to achieve business priorities. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? bennett: I am pragmatic about whether people are remembered or not over the course of corporate history, however if I am to be remembered, I would like it to be as a leader in the general sense. Someone who left the technology function in better shape than when he started – someone who created a more scaleable, flexible and responsive information systems environment, with people who were engaged and energised to work for NAB because they believed the best days for the organisation lay ahead.

C o - S ponSo r e d a r t i Cle

Mitigating reputational risk via cloud By Charles Woods, Director, Risk and Resiliency Centre of Excellence, IBM Asia Pacific

Cloud computing is a key strategy in mitigating reputational risk. Delivering on customer expectations of service and availability has become one of the biggest challenges to financial services. Technology proliferation within the user community has forced banking enterprises to open their doors to the world of continuous service availability, which means a service or function is always available, anytime from anywhere no exceptions. Take on-line banking. Originally a bill pay service provided to customers, it’s now become the standard of daily banking and includes a plethora of services for existing and prospective customers. In essence on-line banking now delivers the bank’s brand and is subject to the bank’s capability to deliver continuous availability of service. And when this service is unavailable, the provider’s brand and reputation suffer. In some industries, this breach of trust is unrecoverable. Is continuous service availability important? You bet it is. And one of the most influencing functions in maintaining the bank’s brand. Also the bank’s most vulnerable. So how does cloud play a role in mitigating reputational risk? Cloud computing supports the development of continuous service availability frameworks. Frameworks are constructed to support mission critical functions with high levels of resiliency. New approaches to continuous service availability are imperative to the survival of the brand and one of the ways to get there is via the cloud. Managing critical business functions within a private cloud enables you to build resiliency into specific business functions imperative to your brand. Designing multi-cloud frameworks could enable you to achieve continuous service availability for your mission critical functions……like on-line banking. Can Cloud Computing play a role in mitigating your reputation risk?

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // j e F F sM i t h

Jeff smith chief execuTive officer, suncorp Business services, suncorp

Fst Media: What were the most notable challenges in delivering Suncorp’s merger with Promina?

Fst Media: Can you expand on the implementation and deliverability of Living Agile, Suncorp’s new change program?

sMith: We have deployed our single pricing engine and claims system for most of our major brands and products and are in the process of completing the final rollout. The Promina transaction involved one of the largest and most complex mergers of brands, processes and systems in recent Australian financial services history. One of the most challenging aspects, however, was bringing together a range of quite different corporate cultures. In my business area we took this opportunity to introduce a new culture around agile techniques, which has been very successful and we are now seeing other areas of Suncorp taking a similar approach.

sMith: Agile has enabled us to deliver

Fst Media: Suncorp is trialling Bring Your Own (BYO) IT to promote agile business practices. How are employees responding to this; and how do you see agile evolving at Suncorp?

Fst Media: What are your top priorities for the next 12 to 18 months? Suncorp’s five operating divisions to support their various business requirements. Over the next 12 to 18 months, we will be focused on delivering various aspects of the group’s ‘Building Blocks’ program, which involves a range of IT-related projects that will significantly improve the infrastructure available to Suncorp’s businesses and should translate into improved business performance.

sMith: Companies are increasingly looking for ways to offer more flexible ways of working to their employees. This obviously benefits employees and companies from recruitment and retention perspectives but it can also enhance a company’s operating capability. For example, in the recent floods when Suncorp’s Brisbane call centres were evacuated, we were able to maintain customer service by enabling 3,000 employees to work from home using our IP telephony and virtualisation technologies.

Fst Media: The Building Blocks program is tipped to save A$235 million annually by 2013. How is this initiative progressing; and what specific technologies are involved?

Fst Media: Suncorp has reportedly gained significant commercial value from virtualisation and Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Do you feel cloud is the next step in the natural progression?

sMith: It is progressing well. We have already

sMith: Suncorp has derived significant

delivered on several fronts: providing single views of customers, people and financials; and we are at an advanced rollout stage in relation to a single pricing engine and claims management platform. We have used Guidewire for claims, Oracle for financials and payroll and LINUX J Boss and NetApp for infrastructure.

business advantages from virtualisation and establishing its own cloud. I think the commercial imperatives are clear and more and more organisations will make similar investments in cloud environments. For example, our PeopleSoft payroll and Yammer collaborations are both hosted in the cloud.

sMith: My teams work very closely with

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major projects ahead of time and under budget time after time and reinvest our IT savings in innovative new projects. It has brought together teams from very different backgrounds and skills sets and enabled us to build a single culture.

Fst Media: What key skills does it take to be a successful CIO today? sMith: Very few executives can be successful unless they have a strong team supporting them so I would say that is the number one requirement. Obviously successful CIOs require some degree of technical knowledge but I think they also have to be open to new ways of working, new technologies and new suppliers and partners. The third key element is the ability to be a commercial partner for your business rather than a cost centre. Fst Media: What has been your proudest achievement since you started at Suncorp? sMith: I am proud of the way my teams have been able to consistently meet the commercial needs of Suncorp’s businesses through a period of time that has included a major merger, the global financial crisis, numerous severe weather events and significant cultural change. This has truly been a team effort and I genuinely believe Suncorp has developed one of the most efficient and effective technology teams in corporate Australia. Fst Media: Every leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? sMith: I think my team’s legacy will be the introduction of agile, which has truly transformed the culture of the group, as well as the ability to effectively support Suncorp’s commercial imperatives rather than being seen as a cost centre.

w h o’ s w h o Q& a // a da M b e n n e t t

having completed the largest banking migration in Australian history. To date we have migrated 10 million retail deposit and transaction accounts to the new platform. These customers are for the first time experiencing the benefits of real-time banking, including instant account opening, immediate display of transaction and account details, and on-the-spot fee refunds. The customer feedback so far has been even better than expected. Over the next two years we will be shifting focus – offering our business deposits and lending products on our new banking platform, as well as integrating our market leading cash management system, CommBiz. As our new CBM platform is integrated into our business, it is also providing the added benefit of replacing systems that have been around for a long time. These legacy systems were becoming harder and riskier to maintain, so there are other benefits around reducing operating expenses, technical risk and complexity.

Fst Media: Cloud computing and Software-asa-Service (SaaS) are key to CBA’s IT strategy. What key indicators suggest that an organisation is ready to switch to these services?

adam Bennett chief informATion officer, reTAil, Business And privATe BAnking, commonWealth BanK of australia Fst Media: How do you maintain a cohesive IT roadmap across the varying businesses? bennett: My team is tightly integrated into the Retail Banking Services (RBS) and Business & Private Banking (B&PB) business divisions and is actively engaged in all aspects of business strategy and planning. This engagement model facilitates the development of business-led technology strategies and roadmaps across each key line of business. Underpinning this is a group-wide focus on enterprise architecture 64

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and project portfolio management. We look for linkages across the various lines of business, focusing on standardisation and re-use, so we can share the best technology assets and practices across different areas.

Fst Media: To what extent are the Retail, Business and Private Banking businesses impacted by Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA)’s core system modernisation? bennett: Core Banking Modernisation (CBM) is already having a transformational impact across the bank, particularly in the retail business. CBM underpins the next key phase in the evolution of our strategy – something which will enhance the customer experience and deliver a clear advantage over the coming years. We have passed the half-way mark in the four-year program,

bennett: As dry as it sounds, these new computing models work best where there are higher levels of consistency in architecture and an organisation’s application portfolio sits on common and standardised platforms. The main benefit of cloud computing is that it takes infrastructure off the critical path for projects. It avoids the scenario where the business is ready to launch a new product but has to wait while we put the infrastructure in place. The immediacy and flexibility afforded by cloud and SaaS models provides new business capabilities which are great for our customers. Fst Media: What do you regard as the pervasive security concerns within the cloud and ‘pay-as-you-go’ service models; and how is CBA overcoming these issues? bennett: The cloud model is a continuum that spans running private clouds within our own data centres all the way through to

a da M b e nn e t t // w h o’ s w h o Q& a

public clouds. What we are doing currently is focused more on establishing a private cloud within data centres located in Australia. To fully exploit the public cloud, the industry has a lot of work to do in terms of security and regulation, and we are seeing this happen through forums such as the Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council. The strategic benefits afforded by ‘pay-as-you-go’ or ‘utility’ service models mean that these issues and concerns will be worked through and overcome in time.

Fst Media: CBA credits its heavy technology investment during the economic crisis as a key contributor to recent profit gains. Which technologies and strategies are behind CBA’s success; and what have been the business benefits for your IT divisions? bennett: Technology and operational excellence is one of the Group’s five strategic priorities, so there is recognition from the Board and CEO down through the organisation that technology is driving strategic advantage across the business. While we have improved our IT project delivery, our IT efficiency ratio and system reliability, the business has also become more IT savvy. It is the business which is driving the technology strategy and project portfolio. The NetBank story is amazing – we’ve had up to 138,000 people an hour logging in and over 2.4 million individual logins recorded in a single day. We continue to innovate and deliver richer sales, service and transactional capabilities through NetBank and our other leading online platforms. Developments in these online channels directly support the Group’s customer service strategy and drive customer acquisition, cross-sell, and retention. We have also been focusing in recent years on process automation and re-engineering. Our Mortgages Made Easy project has removed paper entirely from the end-to-end home loan origination process and enabled the 60 minute loan. The project leveraged best-practice business process management, workflow, rules engine, and imaging technologies and builds on our investment in the CommSee customer management platform. These types of investments drive

significant productivity improvements and have contributed to the material reduction in the bank’s cost to income ratio in recent years.

Fst Media: What IT priorities are shaping your agenda for the year ahead? bennett: Leveraging the new capabilities of CBM is a significant priority for the retail and business banking divisions in the year ahead. We will be preparing our systems and processes to make unique offers in specific segments and geographies, delivering new products and capitalising on the provision of more agile services. More broadly, we are looking to build on the success of our customer service agenda by utilising technology to make interacting with us simpler and easier for customers. This will see continued investment in online and mobile channels and payments innovation. Fst Media: CBA has gained significant traction with its mobile channel. What do you see as the next frontier of mobile technology at CBA? bennett: There has been an impressive uptake of our mobile banking applications, with 14 per cent of our NetBank logins now via mobile devices. Such popularity has been driven in part by innovative applications, the increased number of smart phones and the evolution of mobile payment capabilities. We are continually introducing new features and capabilities that let our customers interact with us instantly and while on the move, having most recently launched a NetBank application for Andriod phones. Our customers are increasingly sophisticated – they want anywhere, anytime, any device convenience across any channel. We are working towards making mobile banking a more integrated channel that delivers a range of value added services. Watch this space! Fst Media: IT project risks (i.e. budget blowouts, loss of intellectual property with staff turnaround, etc) are among the top challenges for CIOs today. What advice can you give to CIOs currently undertaking large-scale IT initiatives?

bennett: Top down sponsorship and alignment is critical, as is having a tech savvy executive committee and leadership team. Both have been key components of our success. Having a CEO who is a former CIO is one reason why CBA has had such successes in leveraging the benefits of IT for our customers and has been prepared to take on some genuinely ambitious IT investments. A critical component of IT project success is strong governance and visibility of how projects are travelling – that requires project management methodologies, tools and capabilities. With these in place, the business can make informed strategic decisions along the way. Most importantly, quality people are essential. Fst Media: What IT skills are in demand at CBA right now; and what qualities do you look for in aspiring IT protégés? bennett: Specific technical skills are always more or less in demand. I’m really looking for talented people who can partner with the business to deliver for our customers – so business-savvy, commercial acumen and leadership capability is as essential as strong technology skills. My advice to aspiring IT protégés is to build on these capabilities so they can drive strong business outcomes. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? bennett: Creating my professional legacy is still very much a work in progress. I hope to be remembered for creating strategic technology assets. A strategic asset is defined by MIT as something that you control, cannot be easily replicated and delivers sustained competitive advantage. Our key platforms – NetBank, CommSec, CommBiz, Bank Payments Hub and Core Banking Modernisation – would qualify under this definition and have fundamentally improved the technology landscape at CBA and contributed to our market leading position in the financial services industry. I would also hope to be remembered for growing leadership talent and fostering the next generation of business-savvy CIOs.

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // a n dy w e i r

andy Weir

Fst Media: What IT priorities are shaping your agenda for the year ahead?

chief informATion officer, BanKWest

weir: We’ll be continuing to aggressively push through changes to create a more innovative culture across Bankwest with more ‘innovation days’ planned in year ahead. We’ll also be stepping up our mobilisation and deployment of agile methodologies. Finally, we’re making further significant investments in colleague and team-based development programs to support delivery of our strategic priorities. Fst Media: Bankwest is migrating its IT infrastructure into a new data centre. From a sustainability perspective, what are the key benefits of this project?

weir: For Bankwest the key drivers with the new data centre are flexibility and reducing our carbon footprint. The new facility offers us much greater flexibility in terms of being able to deploy newer technology which means we can react to our business demands in a much more responsive fashion. Virtualisation and internal cloud offerings are just two example of this. From a carbon footprint perspective we’ve taken a massive step forward. The new data centre includes state-of-the-art technology that means we can much more efficiently power and cool our infrastructure. Fst Media: How are you overcoming the widespread security concerns around cloud computing; and what benefits do you see this initiative delivering to Bankwest? weir: Being a financial institution security of our customers’ data is of paramount importance to us. We are looking to build some internal cloud capability and also leveraging some external offerings in areas that we don’t have sensitive information. We will continue to assess the market and ensure that we have a risk-aware approach to our consumption of it. Cloud offers us some real benefits in terms of agility. Being able to create environments almost instantly to try out new ideas, and then shut them down if it doesn’t work out, will help underpin our continued desire to maintain our innovation culture. Fst Media: What have been the benefits from Bankwest’s shift towards agile methods; and how have employees responded to this? weir: Our agile adoption is going fantastically well and is certainly gathering momentum. We’ve experienced several types of benefit already. Firstly, in scope management by only creating what we need – one project in particular avoided development costs of several hundred thousand dollars. The other experience is in ‘fail fast’ – that is, being able to identify a problem much earlier in the development and fixing it, because the later in the lifecycle a problem occurs, the more expensive and complex it is to fix it.

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a n dy w e i r // w h o’ s w h o Q& a

On the colleague front, the response has been fantastic. Without exception, colleagues who have worked in an agile way do not want to work in any other way. If anything, our challenge is that we have more colleagues eager to work in an agile way than experienced ‘agileists’ to support them, so we are constantly looking for experienced agile colleagues to help our transformation. Finally, our internal customers are also enjoying the highly collaborative approaches which have led to improved engagement and higher quality scope management.

Fst Media: Bankwest’s parent company Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is continuing to invest in its core banking modernisation initiative. How will this influence your ongoing IT roadmap? weir: Our relationship with our CBA parent is fantastic. We are continually looking to leverage opportunities to re-use assets to help reduce cost, manage operational risk and improve customer service from the Group’s technology investments. The key factor is that areas of the CBA technology community share the same desire to deliver excellence, innovation and ensure the highest possible level of customer focus which makes it easier to leverage capability. Fst Media: What changes will Bankwest customers experience with your newly upgraded online banking platform; and what makes the website so customer centric? weir: Our new public website has an innovative, clean design that we believe will stand out among banking websites in Australia. Our objective was to have our website stand out in exactly the same way as our retail stores already do. The information architecture, content and images have been totally redesigned to make it easy for our customers to get the functions and information they need, while the overall tone of the site delivers our ‘Happy Banking’ message. Fst Media: What are the key enhancements to Bankwest’s smartphone-enabled mobile

Fst Media: In your opinion, how close is the banking sector to delivering a true multichannel banking strategy (i.e. starting a transaction on your mobile phone and completing it online)?

cloud offers us some real benefits in terms of agility. Being able to create environments almost instantly to try out new ideas, and then shut them down if it doesn’t work out, will help underpin our continued desire to maintain our innovative culture.

weir: Traditionally in financial services, organisations have systems and processes that span across channels, but the channels themselves can still often operate on a siloed basis. This can result in duplication, inefficiency and an inconsistent customer experience. From a customer perspective, a channel is just a way of having an interaction, not a choice about which part of the organisation they want to deal with. The challenge for organisations is to design the channels to work more in harmony to enhance the overall experience for the customer.

banking solution; and how do you see this channel evolving over the next two years?

Fst Media: Is Bankwest keen to leverage contactless payments technology and social media tools such as Facebook; and do you see retail banking becoming a purely virtual service in the future?

weir: There is no doubt that the smartphone banking channel will be a key focus for us over the next few years, and we have prioritised additional investment into that space. We have recently launched an iPhone app which we are proud to see sitting at number two in the Apple Store Finance App category since its launch. Looking forward I would expect location, special deals and payments to be hot areas of innovation on the smartphone channel. Fst Media: Bankwest recently launched an interactive banking kiosk in Perth. From a customer experience perspective, what enhancements will this deliver? weir: We’re very excited about the kiosk concept which is delivering increased accessibility, convenience and functionality for Bankwest customers. Like our new stores, the kiosks are designed to be highly interactive, bright and customer friendly and this development will enable us to more rapidly deploy physical presence into new, high customer-footfall locations.

weir: We are keen to expand our proposition in these spaces and we’ve recently launched Mastercard Paypass contactless credit cards which will continue to roll out this year. In terms of social media, there is undoubtedly real potential to exploit and we are currently developing a number of ideas and strategies which we feel align well to our overall Bankwest customer proposition. These developments will be driven in the context of continuing to develop and enhance our physical distribution proposition, as these are the places where customers value having real conversations with real Bankwest colleagues about their banking needs and goals. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? weir: To have created a truly customercentric technology capability, that is acknowledged as making a real difference to our business.

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // a l e x t w igg

Fst Media: What emerging technologies are changing the face of online banking today? twigg: There is the normal list of new

alex twigg

Fst Media: What are your key priorities for the next one to two years?

generAl mAnAger, uBanK

twigg: For the last six months we have experienced tremendous success. UBank has continued to deliver amazing results and we have launched two new products, USaver and USaver Reach. The next 12 months is all about cementing that success and delivering the new mortgage proposition to our customers. We will focus on continuing to deliver incredible customer innovation and challenging the industry on its service standards. Fst Media: How vital is IT innovation to UBank’s ongoing success? twigg: IT innovation is pretty much everything for UBank. Technology is the bricks and mortar of this organisation. We have to make sure the technology is absolutely solid as we drive it forward and we have the ability to react and change to market conditions, competitors and emerging technologies.

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technologies. There are micropayments and the continual evolution of social media. With regard to social media, UBank has taken that from the very early stages to now, becoming probably the most successful bank to harness social media in Australia and challenging some of the biggest banks in the world. I think we have more than 5,500 Facebook fans, 3,500 Twitter followers and over a quarter of a million viewers of our YouTube site. In saying that, social media integration will continue at UBank and we will continue to drive that for the next 12 months. I think it’s really difficult to predict what the next big thing will be in banking and financial services, but the most critical thing for me in the technology world is to be able to build a sustainable set of processes and technologies that we can change quickly. We have seen so many things come and go. We’ve seen so much wasted investment in technologies that were flash in the pan; to be able to predict which ones are good is difficult, so those industries and businesses that really invest in their technology change capability and their ability to react to opportunities and competition are the ones that are going to survive and win.

Fst Media: From the start UBank has been an advocate of social media. Which social media channels are proving to be the most effective for customer acquisition and retention? twigg: We have had tremendous success with Facebook but the trick with social media is understanding that there is no one channel. The combination of channels is the thing that provides power in the conversations. The key is to be on all the channels because there are customers that prefer Twitter, and others that prefer Facebook. I’m sure we’ll have customers that prefer the next social media thing as well so it’s really important having a presence in all of those channels and to continue conversations across the channels which are really important to our customers.

a l e x t w igg // w h o’ s w h o Q& a

Fst Media: What advice can you give to IT executives on how to protect against the risk of reputation damage often associated with social media networks? twigg: The conversations are happening whether you like it or not. If you go and search on any Twitter account for the name of any big bank you will find these conversations happening. Unless you are in those conversations, unless you decide to be in those conversations, then there is no way of answering and responding. It is much better to talk to people and have an open and honest interaction rather than being afraid to enter into conversations because you may end up with a communications problem. We must talk to get in the conversation, start the conversations and think about it in exactly the same way that you would think about any other communication channel – on the telephone, direct mail, email, or click to chat. Whatever the process is you must have standard guidelines and frameworks for your staff to use – you have escalation processes if things go wrong and social media is exactly the same. Fst Media: With traditional banks embracing the online channel, how will UBank protect its stronghold as an online-only bank?

twigg: UBank is about changing and creating a new business model. The existing banks and the traditional banks have large operating costs that they have to maintain, UBank doesn’t. It is about creating and maintaining that differentiation and continuing to challenge the status quo of the industry. We also have to continuously provide exceptional levels of service through our electronic channels.

Fst Media: What makes the UBank Anywhere smartphone application so innovative; and what new developments can we expect from UBank? twigg: The concept of Anywhere is not specifically about smartphone applications, it’s about being where our customers are not physically located. We are not and we can’t believe we would ever be our customers’

homepage of choice. The Googles of this world will always be in those places; we need to be where our customers are and where they are communicating, and where they need to be. That is what Anywhere is all about. It’s about social media integration, and providing our UBank information into those places and allowing our customers to consume that information when and how they want to and you’ll see that continue. The Anywhere concept will continue to come out through everything we do in UBank.

technology architecture will be able to support the provision of that functionality in multiple channels without having to have multiple code basis and without increasing the cost of ownership and being able to change all of those channels simultaneously. Everything we do at UBank is focused on the customer and the customer service we provide. We are going through NextGen to deliver change capability which will enable us to drive functionality and communication through all channels.

Fst Media: Can you elaborate on UBank’s Facebook banking initiative; what stage is this at and what are the key business benefits?

Fst Media: How can the personal element of customer service be transferred online?

twigg: Facebook is an evolutionary project for UBank. We continue to grow it. We have lots of innovation in the pipeline, which we will announce when we’re ready but it’s all about growing and learning with the media and our customers. The benefits to the business are huge; we have interaction with customers on a daily basis that other organisations would love to have.

Fst Media: How closely aligned is UBank’s IT strategy with that of parent company National Australia Bank (NAB); and how is NAB’s NextGen core banking initiative influencing UBank? twigg: UBank is the pilot for the NextGen initiative. It has been tremendously successful, we have won industry awards and we continue to develop the NextGen and UBank platforms for all of our existing and new products that have been launched in the last six months. We continue to build out the platform and new versions will be coming to UBank in the future months. NAB will adopt that platform and roll it out across the organisation in the following years. Fst Media: What are the challenges of building content and functionality across a multi-channel banking strategy? twigg: Customers don’t care what channel or device they are using, they want the same content and functionality in all channels. The trick is to actually make sure that your

twigg: In a few different ways. The sort of customer experience and the personalisation that you come to expect from a one-to-one relationship with your banker is very different from the one-to-one relationship that you have with an online institution like UBank. It’s about UBank providing an experience that is customised by the data we have, and the type of transactions customers are trying to perform. Basically it’s about being available and providing seamless functionality to personalise the experience and really give you value back through the experience by understanding who you are and what you do. Fst Media: As General Manager, how do you reconcile technology investment with UBank’s business objectives? twigg: Technology is the business objective. They cannot be separated. We have strived endlessly to make sure that we have straight-through-processing for pretty much everything that happens within UBank. That’s the only way we can maintain our price point and our cost proposition and that’s the way we can add in real customer service, remove the element of human error and then provide a phenomenal customer experience if the customers have a problem and want to ring us. Fst Media: Every leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? twigg: It is really simple: I just want to create the best direct bank in the world.

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // l e e b a r n e t t

lee Barnett chief informATion officer, amp

Fst Media: AMP has made a heavy push into the private cloud with the recently created Collaborative Online Services (COS) project. What value will this bring to your teams; and what other cloud-based IT initiatives are in the pipeline for AMP in the next two years? barnett: The pilot we ran showed significant productivity and collaboration benefits for our staff through tighter integration with AMP’s existing Microsoft Office products. Staff engagement was also a factor – we received a very positive reaction from our employees when we announced the change in July 2010.

Financial benefits were also a key consideration for AMP in selecting AMP’s mail platform. CSC’s cloud offering gives AMP the ability to provide staff with the productivity benefits without the costs of maintaining an in-house solution. AMP already uses a number of Softwareas-a-Service (SaaS) applications. We will continue to evaluate cloud based opportunities in other areas however privacy, risk, security and regulatory compliance continue to be factors in that evaluation. In respect of ‘Infrastructure-as-a-Service’ initiatives outside the COS project we are becoming more structured in our planning. Last year we successfully completed a pilot involving the hosting of a development environment in the cloud. The pilot helped us develop a greater understanding of the opportunity as well as the current limitations. The cloud represents an exciting opportunity to extract significant cost and agility benefits in terms of how we deliver

and support IT across our business. However, it still carries risk and constraints that need to be considered in sourcing decisions.

Fst Media: What key indicators suggest a large-scale financial services organisation is ready to undertake cloud initiatives?

barnett: Large-scale financial services organisations like AMP are trusted with significant amounts of client money and client data. We therefore need to be prudent about our exposure to operating, financial and privacy risks. One indicator that does provide insight into how quickly a large-scale financial institution can migrate to cloud solutions is the level of virtualisation. Companies that have invested in virtualisation will be better positioned to migrate to the cloud.

Fst Media: What are the short-term IT integration plans for the AMP and AXA Financial Services’ (AXA) merger? barnett: Integration plans are a work in progress and will be further developed with our colleagues at AXA, assuming the merger and integration proceeds (not finalised at the time of writing). We will play a critical role in delivering the IT integration synergy benefits as well as maintaining the operating stability of two complex businesses.

Fst Media: What technology priorities are shaping your agenda for the next 12 to 18 months? barnett: A key priority is the continued implementation of our unified collaboration strategy. This will deliver an integrated set of technologies covering unified communication, collaboration, office productivity, document management and enterprise search. Our objective is to support creativity and innovation through increased and more effective collaboration and communication. We’ll enter the first phase of this roadmap later this year with the rollout of Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint. We will continue to invest in virtualisation across the server environment and we plan to run a pilot at the desktop level later this year. We believe virtualisation is key to

who ’s who of fs i

New thinking, New vision F O R L E A D I N G O R GA N I Z AT I O N A L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N

A N D AC C E L E R AT I N G B U S I N E S S G R OW T H MphasiSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; track record for delivery of excellence at a global scale, points to a winning capability to align new technology with change, cost effectively, successfully and consistently.

MphasiS is a $1 billion service provider, delivering solutions to clients across various industries globally. Our competency lies in our ability to offer integrated services in Applications, Business Process Outsourcing and Infrastructure Services. We are uniquely positioned to offer our clients the highest level of expertise and competitive costs. MphasiS services clients in Banking and Capital Markets, Insurance, Manufacturing, Communications, Media & Entertainment, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Transportation & Logistics, Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods, Energy & Utilities, and Governments around the world. MphasiSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Banking Practice is its longest standing and has been built through consistently successful experiences from executing hi-tech, hi-innovation projects. Our global best deliveries have been in multi-channel delivery, mobile technologies, business analytics, and business process improvement, amongst others. Our global client list includes 9 of the top 10 universal banks Our well-entrenched footprint in Capital Markets has the trust of top-notch clientele ranging from; Investment banks to asset managers Retail brokers to custodians Financial information providers to industry regulators MphasiSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Insurance Practice has an extensive pool of industry experts across Life & Annuities and Property & Casualty that develop and implement domain focused solutions which are relevant to insurance business, clients and partners. 9 Norberry Terrace, 177 - 199 Pacific Hwy, North Sydney, 2060, Australia Tel.: +61 2 99542222, Fax: +61 2 99558112 www.mphasis.com

adapti

w h o’ s w h o Q& a // l e e b a r n e t t

“ capitalising on cloud computing and driving simplification, flexibility and efficiency. We have developed an identity and access management strategy. We are investing in this area to not only improve capability but also to simplify our employee experience through services such as enterprise single sign-on. Mobility continues to be another key industry trend. Last year, for our employees, we added iPads and iPhones to our services catalogue. These devices are not without their challenges, but we believe we have appropriately balanced the business benefit with the security concerns.

Fst Media: AMP is an advocate of social media tools such as Yammer, Twitter, Idea Frontier and blogs. How do you see social media evolving at AMP over the next two to three years?

barnett: We see social media as a tectonic shift in the way it is shaping communication and behaviour. Internally, we have been early experimenters with these technologies to facilitate open and transparent communication, collaboration and innovation. It has had a measurable impact in making our culture more transparent and connected as measured through our annual employee engagement surveys. In the next two to three years we need to go beyond internal communication and collaboration and bring these benefits to our customer and planner interactions.

Fst Media: Wealth management is a personal, relationship-driven business model. How can this human element of customer service be transferred online? barnett: I wonder if that truism is already being challenged by a shift in the values, behaviours and expectations of customers as technology evolves. Traditional businesses underestimate the effectiveness of social media in deepening personalisation and customer intimacy online. Online does not necessarily mean impersonal. ‘Personal’ is about knowing your customer and what matters to them. It’s about serving them in a way relevant to their needs and the timing and context

who ’s who of fs i

Fst Media: The theme for the AMPlify

gen-y customers see super more like a tax than long-term savings and in many cases don’t even see it as their money.

of those needs. Digital technologies are far more agile at helping us be relevant to customers in a timely and contextual way than the synchronous demands of the personal service model. One person may define a personal relationship and human touch as a company representative reading their recent Facebook updates before talking to them. Another customer may not trust Facebook at all and may prefer to have face-to-face interactions instead. That is the challenge of personalisation.

Fst Media: How is innovation playing a role in supporting AMP’s strategy to attract and retain the Gen-Y customer base; and which channels are the most effective at doing so?

barnett: AMP does not have a stated strategy to attract and retain Gen-Y customers. However, while Gen-Y has not been a priority segment for us, we have invested resources in learning about their potential in becoming future AMP customers. Gen-Y customers see super more like a tax than long-term savings and in many cases don’t even see it as their money. We will continue our ongoing investment in member education, including workplace seminars, personalised member benefit reports and online support to become and remain relevant to this market. Our recent product initiative, Flexible Super, has resonated with this market. One third of the customers in the core, low cost, nil-commission superannuation option are under 30. We have also had some success with our banking products. The online nature of this product fits this demographic well.

Innovation and Thought Leadership festival is ‘Everything Connects’. What was the inspiration behind this theme; and what makes AMPlify so innovative?

barnett: When all the previous capability that technology has delivered shrinks and lives in the palm of our hand – connected without physical infrastructure to everything else, human behaviour shifts. As for the magic of the AMPlify Festival, it’s the combination of things, not the individual pieces, that makes it so innovative. It inverts the typical organisational learning model of a handful of people getting a chance to attend conferences or executive programmes at prestigious institutions. We bring international thought leaders and innovators in-house and give everyone an equal opportunity to learn from them. We run AMPlify during a normal work week but produce it in a festival format, not as a conference. This means our people self-select what they want to attend, and self-manage their time as a combination of lunch hours or drawing on training allowances to attend. C

CMY

Fst Media: What do you think it takes to be an effective CIO in today’s financial services market?

barnett: Effective CIOs are innovators and integrators. They have a deep understanding of the industry and are respected by their peers. CIOs in financial services also manage large business units with complex sourcing arrangements, so being able to effectively manage people and relationships both internally and externally is critical. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? barnett: My answer is the same as last year. My legacy will be a talented team of professionals working within a successful operating model and business partnership that is the envy of the industry. And yes, some great IT assets!

B C S

adaptiv advert.pdf adaptiv 1 advert.pdf 5/12/2011 adaptiv advert.pdf 19:58:48 5/12/2011 AM 1 5/12/2011 9:58:48 AM9:58:48 AM

adaptiv advert.pdf 1 5/12/2011 9:58:48 AM

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Best Practice CVA (Credit Valuation Adjustment) Best Practice CVA (Credit Valuation Adjustment) BestBest Practice Best Practice Practice CVACVA (Credit CVA (Credit (Credit Valuation Valuation Valuation Adjustment) Adjustment) Adjustment) Adaptiv: Proven Today, Prepared for Tomorrow Adaptiv: Proven Today, Prepared forfor Tomorrow Adaptiv: Adaptiv: Adaptiv: Proven Proven Proven Today, Today, Today, Prepared Prepared Prepared for Tomorrow for Tomorrow Tomorrow Best Practice CVA (Credit Valuation Adjustment) Adaptiv: Proven Today, Prepared for Tomorrow Find out more: www.sungard.com/enterpriserisk Find outout more: www.sungard.com/enterpriserisk FindFind out Find out more: more: www.sungard.com/enterpriserisk more: www.sungard.com/enterpriserisk www.sungard.com/enterpriserisk Find out more: www.sungard.com/enterpriserisk

Trademark Information: SunGard, SunGard Adaptiv and the SunGard logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. ©2011 SunGard.

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // d h i r e n k u l k a r n i

dhiren Kulkarni chief informATion officer, st. george BanK

kulkarni: We want to have a strong presence in the channels our customers are already using and keep a step ahead of new technologies. Our online channels have continued to grow steadily, with mobile banking in particular displaying a very rapid take up. The key to delighting customers in this space is providing them with a convenient experience, irrespective of their mobile platform of choice. Our iPhone and iPad applications have both proven very popular, with our Android offering also gaining momentum. We’ve also developed Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry applications for customers on those platforms – giving us a strong presence across the major smartphone operating systems. Fst Media: St. George is one of the few local banks to invest in developing Blackberry applications. What have been the benefits of moving into this generally untapped banking market?

Fst Media: What are your top IT priorities for the year ahead? kulkarni: Our top IT priorities in 2011 are customer experience, growth and innovation. We want to be known for creating simplified and innovative customer touch-points and we want to continue to excel in this area. By continuing to listen to our customers we will identify their pain points and do our best to address them. Our IT model will continue to support St. George Bank (St. George) in growing and acquiring market share, particularly in the areas of lending, deposits and business banking. We will extend our multi-brand technology capabilities through the launch of Bank of Melbourne in Victoria later this year. This is an exciting time for St. George as we will be at the forefront of innovation as we build a new bank.

Fst Media: St. George has spent A$2 million improving its digital banking channels including smartphone and tablet applications. Which channel is delivering the best results? 74

who ’s wh o of fs i

kulkarni: In the Australian business market there are more BlackBerrys used than any other device. While this is the primary reason we wanted to be in this market, we have also been able to enjoy the benefits of extending our technology architecture from one platform to another at an incremental cost. This forward thinking will see us continue to be able to target the leading devices in the market, irrespective of what mobile operating system is used. Fst Media: How is innovation changing your customers’ retail banking consumption habits? kulkarni: Technology and the innovation we provide is changing our customers’ habits considerably. More than 93 per cent of transactions at St. George are technology based. Our customers are looking for easier and simpler transaction methods. St. George is one of the few banks utilising the full capability of SMS to contact customers regarding key transactions or account events. Innovation is not necessarily about bringing in new technology, but using existing technology to improve what matters to your customers. We must add value to customer

transactions and exceed their expectations. St. George customers can go to a branch, open an account and walk out with a card they can use immediately in an ATM. This is our online, real time transaction system which we have been using for a number of years. Whether it is internet, branch or online, the transaction is visible in real time.

Fst Media: What has been your proudest achievement since you started as Chief Information Officer (CIO) at St. George? kulkarni: I’ve been very lucky to have worked with some inspiring people during my 25 years with St. George. Since becoming CIO in 2008 both the bank and my team have achieved so much – be it integrating into The Westpac Group or announcing Bank of Melbourne earlier this year. Yet unquestionably my proudest achievement is being known as the ‘customer-centric CIO’. More and more organisations are starting to see the importance of customer centricity. St. George recognised this years ago and I am privileged to see this journey continue to grow under the leadership of Gail Kelly, Rob Chapman and Bob McKinnon. Fst Media: What IT skills are in demand at St. George right now? kulkarni: St. George places high value on people who are able to relate their work to delighting customers, as well as technologies and systems. Our customer-centric culture is such that people need to be able to clearly articulate the relationship between their work and delighting customers. In support of this we have recently launched a new online training initiative to continue developing and enhancing the technology skills of our people. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? kulkarni: My job is to ensure our customers are well serviced and are delighted with our technology. My desired legacy at St. George is to see this customer-centric approach continue at all levels across the organisation.

a dv e r t o r i a l

Speed-to-Value -â&#x20AC;?Jim Highsmith-â&#x20AC;? Flickr Â deploys Â software Â changes Â multiple Â times Â per Â day Â â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Â and Â advertises Â this Â on Â their Â web Â site. Â A Â medical Â software Â company Â deploys Â versions Â of Â their Â application Â software Â over Â 75 Â times Â per Â year. Â Salesforce.com Â has Â gained Â competitive Â advantage Â with Â their Â highly Â automated Â continuous Â integration, Â testing Â and Â deployment Â of Â " speeding Â value Â to Â their Â customers. Speed-to-value Â embodies Â two Â key Â concepts â&#x20AC;&#x201C; speed Â and Â value. Â â&#x20AC;&#x153;Valueâ&#x20AC;? Â means Â that Â we Â are Â constantly Â evaluating â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at Â a Â portfolio, Â project, Â capability Â (epic), Â feature Â and Â story Â level â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the Â value Â we Â are Â delivering Â to Â customers. Â That Â means Â everything Â from Â calculating Â the Â ROI Â of Â projects Â to Â determining Â the Â relative Â (or Â monetary) Â value Â of Â features. Â Then Â on Â a Â release, Â milestone, Â and Â iteration Â level Â we Â are Â constantly Â prioritising Â and Â adjusting Â scope Â based Â on Â value Â and Â cost. The Â agile Â mantra Â has Â always Â been Â to Â deliver Â value Â early Â and Â often, Â but Â we Â have Â not Â always Â pushed Â that Â to Â the Â limits Â of Â actual Â deployment Â and Â customer Â solutions. Â The Â reasons Â are Â more Â organisational Â than Â technical Â (although Â " The Â organisational Â issue Â is Â both Â product Â lifecycle Â and Â business Â customer Â oriented. Â Although Â delivery Â teams Â have Â become Â agile, Â marketing, Â product Â management, Â or Â inter nal Â business Â departments Â have Â sometimes Â been Â reluctant Â to Â change Â their Â traditional Â modes Â of Â operation. Â I Â know Â of Â product Â organisations Â that Â have Â completely Â changed Â their Â perspective â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from Â demanding Â commitment Â to Â features Â a Â year Â in Â advance, Â to Â accepting Â the Â # a â&#x20AC;&#x201C; " Similarly, Â at Â the Â back Â end Â of Â the Â lifecycle, Â development Â and Â operations Â are Â working Â closely Â on Â smooth Â transitions Â from Â development Â complete Â to Â deployment Â complete. Â Value Â is Â only Â realised Â when Â features Â are Â deployed, Â not Â when Â they Â are Â ready Â for Â deployment. Â Speed-to-value Â should Â be Â measured Â across Â the Â entire Â lifecycle, Â from Â placement Â on Â a Â portfolio Â backlog Â to Â actual Â deployment. " use Â frequent Â deployments Â to Â their Â advantage Â â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Â and Â then Â changing Â business Â processes Â to Â accommodate Â them. Â " " " others Â it Â may Â not. Â Finding Â the Â right Â schedule Â of Â deployments Â for Â different Â groups Â means Â business Â departments Â will Â need Â to Â become Â more Â agile Â themselves. a " a " #

Jim Highsmith is an executive consultant with ThoughtWorks, having spent

30-â&#x20AC;? plus years as an IT manager, product manager, project manager, consultant, and software developer. Jim was a co-â&#x20AC;?author of the Agile Manifesto, founding member of the Agile Alliance and is the author of three books.

w h o’ s w h o Q& a // g r eg b ook e r

important from a technology staff perspective that we are able to provide a clear direction and give everyone an understanding of where they fit in the new world. The year ahead also represents a consolidation opportunity; it will be about setting the foundations for the future and positioning wealth technology to support the ANZ super-regional strategy across the coming years.

Fst Media: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and virtualisation are essential to ANZ’s IT infrastructure. What’s next for virtualisation at ANZ Wealth; and what are the business benefits of a virtualised environment?

greg Booker

Fst Media: From an IT perspective, what

chief informATion officer, anZ Wealth

are the key challenges of integrating six separate entities; and how are you centralising the IT operations under your management?

Fst Media: ANZ Wealth was recently

booker: The formation of the wealth

launched, combining ING Australia, ANZ Private, Investment and Insurance, E *Trade and ANZ Financial Planning. What are your key IT priorities for the year ahead?

technology segment has brought with it a number of challenges and also a number of great opportunities. Two key factors are shaping the thinking at the moment: firstly to ensure we have full alignment with the business and that the technology model reflects the emerging business need. Secondly we need to be fully aligned to the overall ANZ technology model and tightly coupled to the vision and direction being led by Anne Weatherston, ANZ’s Global CIO. The finalisation of the integration is a key goal for us. It is very

booker: The bringing together of all aspects of wealth within ANZ provides the bank with a scale in wealth that had previously been lacking. The year ahead is about consolidating the new business, bringing together the seven lines of business into one cohesive wealth group, and integrating into the ANZ business as a whole.

who ’s who of fs i

booker: The use of virtualisation technologies, whether server or desktop, has become ubiquitous across the technology landscape; ANZ is no different to other organisations in wanting to take advantage of the opportunity offered. The wealth business supports two virtual desktop environments, Citrix for our high latency needs, and VM Ware for our core environment. As we integrate fully into the ANZ environment then the opportunity will exist for ANZ to leverage the existing capability to fast path the broader group initiatives. From a server virtualisation perspective the Onepath (former INGA) environment is largely virtualised and this has provided us with a very clear migration path as we consolidate the existing wealth data centres into the ANZ Melbourne environment. Fst Media: Given ANZ advocates mobile banking innovation, what role does mobile technology play in your IT roadmap; and do you envisage this technology becoming a dominant wealth management customer channel going forward? booker: The mobile channel is emerging rapidly as one of choice for certain capabilities. The ANZ goMoney application is a great example of where a relatively simple solution can provide real value to certain areas of the customer base. At the moment the focus in Australia tends to be on the retail bank customer

g r eg b ook e r // w h o’ s w h o Q& a

base and the provision of transactionbased utilities – essentially an internet banking capability on your smartphone. This is not the case overseas, however, where several large financial institutions are providing more sophisticated offerings, such as equities trading, via mobile devices. In our case we are already working with the ANZ innovation team to explore opportunities and set priorities in the wealth space but we are also cognisant of the challenges presented in any early adopter space. The customer requirement for wealth applications on the mobile channel will help set our priorities but there is a definite desire to leverage the success of goMoney and to have a flagship mobile application available in the wealth space.

Fst Media: Wealth management is based on a personal, relationship-driven business model between client and advisor. To what extent can this human element of customer service be transferred online?

booker: There is a very strong relationshipbased model in the traditional wealth management space that is the client and the advisor. What we are seeing in a postGFC world, however, is the emergence of new models for the provision of wealth, notably the light advice space and also the direct channel space. Each of these has varying needs from a customer interaction perspective and as such the technology enablement opportunities vary significantly. The advisor will usually be the channel of choice for the very high net worth customer, often supported by a very high touch private banking model. In this space the personal relationship dominates and technology adopts a true service provider role. In the other areas, however, the role of technology is far more encompassing, with end-to-end solutions being available at the channel of choice for the customer. In the wake of the GFC and recent regulatory changes in the Australian environment we expect light advice and the direct channel to experience rapid growth and much of what we are doing is geared to providing an endto-end customer experience in those areas.

The mobile channel is emerging rapidly as one of choice for certain capabilities. The AnZ gomoney application is a great example of where a relatively simple solution can provide real value.

Fst Media: In the past you have been critical about the hype surrounding Gen-Y and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). What are today’s most overhyped technology trends? booker: This is an interesting question and one I struggle to answer. The GFC was a huge shake-up for both business and technology and one of the key outcomes was to push a ‘back to basics’ mindset into technology. I think Gen-Y had their ‘oh heck’ moment, and SOA has played out as a repackaging of old concepts with minimal success. The currently hot topics, such as mobile banking, Web 2.0, and security all represent an evolution of existing capabilities and are all aligned with the emerging consumer expectation around banking and technology capability. I believe they are all real and will represent significant challenge and opportunity for us in the coming years. I think our industry may be suffering its own post-GFC hangover and going through one of its more pragmatic periods; having said that I will be curious to see how the whole social networking phenomena evolves.

Fst Media: What does it take to be an effective CIO in today’s financial services market?

booker: In the past technology was the domain of the IT department; the CIO was positioned in the mind of the business as the ‘head technologist’. In 2011 technology

pervades every part of our day-to-day lives, from our smartphones, to the way we do our banking, to the way we interact with friends and families. The boundaries between technology and business have blurred to a point of transparency; to be effective a CIO must be able to operate right across that boundary. We have the traditional IT aspects of systems availability and project delivery, which still form our raison d’etre, but coupled with that we have a technology literate business looking for enablement and advice in a very rapidly moving world. The CIO of today needs to be a businessman first, a strategist second and a technologist third.

Fst Media: What IT skills are in demand at ANZ Wealth? booker: We are currently in an integration and consolidation phase and the reality is we have the staff and the skill sets we need to get the job done. That doesn’t mean we are not always on the lookout for the right people. I am a firm believer that it’s the capability and the mindset of the people in a team that makes the biggest difference to a technology area’s ability to be successful and to meet the needs of its business partners. A great outcome can be achieved with a small, tight-knit and highly skilled technology team as was evidenced in the INGA to Onepath brand transition project implemented in November 2010. Not a single severity one or two incident was recorded across a change that spanned the entire INGA portfolio.

Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? booker: I am a firm believer in the people aspects of technology. If I leave a legacy it would be to have been a fair and honest leader. One who undertook the changes required in running a large technology shop with integrity and a lens across all aspects of that change, and one who instilled a culture of ‘winning with humility’ across those I influenced.

w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

w h o’ s w h o Q& a // n e il w h i t e ing

neil Whiteing group chief informATion officer, insurance australia group (iag)

whiteing: For us cloud is the next frontier when it comes to virtualisation. We are taking the ubiquitous connectivity exploding around us and coupling that with advances in virtualisation to enable us to access environments almost anywhere. There are many issues and challenges around privacy and regulatory concerns yet to be fleshed out but we believe there are a number of workloads unconstrained by that level of detail: for example, development and test workloads where I’m not sending out customer data and I’m not bound by the same production requirements of availability and disaster recovery. Fst Media: What kind of a timeline is the industry looking at for implementing cloud?

Fst Media: The online channel is a focal point for attracting and retaining customers. How do you see this channel evolving at IAG? whiteing: Online remains one of many channels we use. It’s a very important one but not what I’d even call our focal point. Our customers are going to choose how they want to interact with us and the key is to get a consistent experience across the channels, whether someone chooses to get in touch online, via a call centre or through a branch. We’re looking for continual and incremental improvement. Each business is approaching this slightly differently, what is consistent is recognition that online is growing; availability is important, as is a streamlined customer experience in terms of interface. Critically, the information needs to be there and be up to date. Fst Media: IAG is embarking on an internal cloud initiative. How is this progressing; and are there plans to move into a public cloud going forward? 78

who ’s who of fs i

whiteing: Different players are taking different approaches. Some are ‘waiting and seeing’ but I think there’s a whole layer being ignored; you have to know how to make this work. We’re already using tokenisation for PCI, where instead of holding credit card details, I get a token from someone who holds the details and complies with security. There’s nothing to say I can’t tokenise my customer data so all personally identifiable information will be retained within our geographic region and the rest of it sent to the cloud in a tokenised, non-identifiable form. Fst Media: From an IT perspective, what are the key benefits of IAG’s new claims management platform? whiteing: We’re looking to implement the platform at the end of the calendar year. First, we’ll have a more integrated, unified view of all data surrounding claims, which allows us to make decisions based on a holistic set of easily managed data. Secondly, the new platform provides the opportunity to incrementally improve our processes. Instead of performing analysis across a range of disparate factors, we can look at a single factor and more quickly understand modifications and adjustments needed to meet the end business goal.

Fst Media: How is IAG positioned with respect to mobile? whiteing: While we have mobile-enabled websites and people use mobiles to photograph accidents with geo-tagging, the idea that smartphones are going to be an integral part of the claims process is, I think, open for debate. We know people aren’t going to keep an app that might be used only once every five years. We have to find other ways to ensure we’re using the technology to best effect. The challenge is finding the most appropriate way to integrate the mobile platform into the overall experience, particularly when most of our customers will only interact with us once or twice a year and not for claiming. To me, it is a business, not a technical problem. Fst Media: IAG prides itself on its reputation of sustainability across business units. What role does IT play in IAG’s sustainability success? whiteing: We have changed our definition of sustainability and now take a multi-faceted approach that starts with the positioning that first, and foremost, we need to have a sustainable business. It’s sustainability underpinned by a performing business. Given the focus on climate change, we look at using technology for things like reducing travel. We have recently implemented high definition video conferencing from Cisco and the business case for that was entirely funded through travel reduction. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? whiteing: I would like to be remembered for the teams I helped build and was part of. The legacy hopefully extends beyond me to a great team left behind. On a more personal level I would like to be remembered for integrity. Ultimately, though, it’s about the principle of custodianship for a short period of time – wanting to leave the organisation even better than when you came.

C o - S ponSo r e d a r t i Cle

Leveraging legacy investment to enhance the customer experience through an integrated CRM platform Standard Bank South Africa (SBSA) is the country’s largest banking establishment in terms of earnings and assets. Its 53,000 employees serve 17 African nations and 15 other countries worldwide. Over 1,150 branches in Africa alone process more than 40 million customer interactions annually.

and automated escalations and alerts allow advisors to proactively manage customer expectations. The Ciboodle Platform is the key integration layer allowing the bank to connect to and leverage many in-place systems, ensuring all relevant data and transactions are exposed to customer-serving staff in a meaningful way.

Until recently SBSA had 23 separate contact centres each using different technologies and processes. With this many contact centers using mismatched systems, customer-facing operations were fragmented and inconsistent. Inefficient CRM processes forced some agents to use up to 18 disparate applications to meet customers’ needs. Contact information was often mishandled, further weakening SBSA’s ability to provide quality customer service. The bank was losing ground to its competitors.

As part of SBSA’s CRM transformation the 23 separate call centres were also removed, and the bank now operates a virtual contact centre that includes home workers.

SBSA realised that trying to implement changes to the existing systems would only be a short-term fix and a complete overhaul of their CRM capabilities was required. After considering a number of options SBSA engaged Sword Ciboodle to deliver Project Sapphire, a transformation of SBSA’s CRM capabilities across three primary lines of business: personal and business banking; risk and wealth management; and corporate and investment banking. The program had a number of key goals: first, to provide a consistent and complete view of customers across all channels and media, including historical data; second, to deliver a strategic call centre desktop to enable advisors to focus on customers, improve their success rate on process fulfillment, and reduce the amount of after-call work, training time and duplicate keying; and finally, to provide the appropriate experience to the customer, based on understanding customer value propositions (CVPs) using a solution that supported flexible workflows and business processes. The solution was to implement an integrated CRM solution based on the Sword Ciboodle customer interaction platform. Today at the bank Ciboodle One presents an intelligent view of customer data and acts as a single launch pad for processes that support all sales and service requests, complaints, collections and fraud inquiries raised via IVR, phone, email, fax, SMS and post. Embedded agent knowledge supports advisors with customer dialogue and regulatory compliance. In addition Ciboodle Flow provides support for straight-through processing of well-defined work allowing scanned documents, notes, images, phone and email transcripts to be seamlessly linked to customer requests. Desktop dashboards provide real time visibility of case progress,

The 2,000 users of the new system are now enjoying increased efficiencies across a range of business processes including sales, account opening, balance enquiries, statement requests, complaints, collections, and fraud management. Customer channels include inbound and outbound phone, email and fax, as well as inbound SMS. The new system integrates seamlessly with the bank’s other key platforms such as SAP Core Banking, Genesys, Avaya, Nice, RightFax, MS Exchange, as well as mainframe and other systems. In the first 24 months of implementation SBSA has saved $24.3 million though new efficiencies, including $2 million savings due to a decrease in training time and agent attrition. The project has also delivered a 30 per cent improvement in first call resolution. “SwordCiboodle has enabled us to stabilise our contact centre operations, provide a scalable platform for growth and reduce our cost to serve.” says Marcel Hemmings, SBSA’s Business Sponsor for Contact Centre Integration. She is also delighted with the recognition that this world-leading CRM implementation is receiving. SBSA was voted the best bank for customer service in 2009 and 2010 by Ask Afrika, and research group Gartner has recently awarded the bank its prestigious CRM Excellence Award.

For further Information please contact: Email: info@sword-ciboodle.com Telephone: +61 2 9264 9566 Web: www.sword-ciboodle.com

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // pe t e r M a h l e r

peter mahler chief informATion officer, aXa asia pacific holdings

finish on the web in real time – workflow, automation and business rules technologies will be key as well has having the confidence in the quality of the data in the back-end systems. Overtime, as customers become more comfortable with the online channel, it may become the preferred channel but this will depend on the uptake rate and the effectiveness of the channel.

Fst Media: Given wealth management and insurance are relationship driven sectors, how can the personal element of customer service be transferred online?

Mahler: This is a key topic for us – transacting models are reasonably mature but relationship models are in their infancy. We have some principles in our relationship model around being attentive, available and reliable – we are working on translating these principles to an online world. In addition, we are looking at having a strong customer relationship management capability which will allow us to have a single view of the customer.

Fst Media: Which IT trends are you focused on now; and why? Mahler: Online and mobile – increasing consumer take-up and expectations. We need to be on top of market trends and understand what they mean to a traditional, intermediated business such as AXA and more broadly to the financial planning industry. Fst Media: Organisations are increasingly shifting customer interactions online. How do you see this channel evolving? Mahler: We have two roles to play – first and foremost, how do we support our financial advisers by simplifying their businesses and helping them connect to their customers using digital technologies. Straight through processing, digital approval rather than written signatures, and secure email channels are some of the fundamentals we are working on. The second role is transformation within the organisation. It is no longer acceptable to have a web front-end that turns in to a long-winded paper-based process – it is not cost effective and it is not fast enough. If something starts on the web it needs to

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Fst Media: Is there a place for mobile technology in the wider insurance and wealth management sectors? Mahler: Mobility has the potential to transform by improving the productivity and efficiency of our advisors and allowing the end customer to have access to their information when they need and want it. Fst Media: How close are the insurance and wealth management sectors from championing the elusive single-customer-view? Mahler: It will still be a while. There are many legacy products and systems and no unique identifier across the industry. Recent legislation on Tax File Number (TFN) for super is positive but it doesn’t apply to insurance or ordinary money; it needs to go further. Fst Media: How is innovation changing insurance and wealth management customers’ consumption habits? Mahler: In the traditional high-value life insurance domain it is difficult to tell, however

in the wealth management (especially ordinary money investments) and the low-end/simpler insurance domain, there is a big shift to self service, direct and low/no advice products. I suspect this is largely driven by internet banking being so prolific that consumers have a high level of trust and expect to see more financial-related products online.

Fst Media: What are your thoughts on cloud computing and what key criteria suggest an organisation is capable to move into the cloud? Mahler: Moving to the cloud is not an infrastructure or even an IT play. It is about business process first and foremost. In other words, the business needs to be comfortable with moving the entire processes to the cloud otherwise cloud will not yield any benefits as the overhead and complexity associated are significant. Financial services is about trust, brand and reputation – if these get tarnished it will affect the business dramatically. So security, privacy, availability are extremely important. Like any change activity, resistance is often at the middle management level where they will feel the impact of change the most; many are comfortable in what they already do and this is one of the biggest barriers. Fst Media: What IT skills are in demand right now?

Mahler: In the senior management roles we see the need for more IT leaders who can play business relationship management roles, program directors and senior architects. At the middle and junior levels there is a high demand for web/JAVA programmers and solution architects. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? Mahler: I feel I have been able to effect changes to the IT organisation by introducing discipline, processes, a sense of accountability and giving IT people a voice on the direction of technology. This in term has uplifted the morale of the people. Today the IT people own the technology vision which supports the business strategy.

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Insuring a high-performance future By Glenn Sedgwick

Past performance is no guarantee of future success. This is especially so in the dramatically changing global insurance environment. Technology-savvy consumers demand more speed, access and collaboration – and insurers must keep up. They must actively push information and services onto mobile and wireless devices and make the most of digital marketing, social media and analysis of consumer behaviour patterns. Looking ahead, insurers will negotiate risks such as the increased frequency of catastrophic events and the higher traffic fatality rates projected for low- and middle-income countries. Carriers in mature markets will have to find ways to retain the knowledge of older workers as retirements mushroom and be increasingly diligent in protecting their technology assets. After the global financial crisis, governments and regulatory authorities recognised the importance of a healthy insurance industry. As such, regulation is here to stay. Brokers are back in the picture as a result of radical consolidation; the professionalisation of advisory services; an increased focus on segments, customers and products; and better leveraging of technology. Aggregators, acting as price comparison platforms and online intermediaries, have already revolutionised insurance distribution in the United Kingdom and may do so in other markets. A growing number of insurers are entering joint ventures and partnerships with large non-traditional players from other industry sectors. Successful insurers will also have to differentiate themselves through excellent customer service. Given the combined strength of these forces, there will be no ‘back to normal’ after the financial crisis. The ‘new normal’ will include significantly lower returns on equity than those in the past decade. Accenture has identified six business models likely to enable high performance in this new paradigm:

3. Global Conquerors – cover multiple geographies and lines of business. They must develop a multi-tiered governance model to balance central, regional and local market requirements. Strategic objectives are set centrally, then cascade down to regional decision-making structures. This requires skills in governance; asset development; and asset and resource allocation. 4. Emerging Titans – fully exploit growth opportunities in their emerging home markets. They operate at large scale with a high degree of standardisation and automation, and are managed from the top down. Despite this centralised structure, they have dedicated groups focused on innovation. Achieving high performance requires large-scale management; simplicity; learning; low-cost distribution; and using new technology to improve the business. 5. Risk Masters – have high degrees of specialisation, centralisation and standardisation – on an international level. These companies are structured and managed at the top level, according to specific types of risk and key accounts, rather than local entities. They need skills in underwriting; risk management; people management; and industry knowledge. 6. Brokers 2.0 – focus mainly on distribution, positioning themselves as an independent source of advice and price comparisons. Their sophisticated online processes address customers’ needs for convenience, transparency and individuality. Key processes and IT are organised centrally, while marketing decisions are made locally. Brokers 2.0 will achieve high performance based on their technology and customer interaction capabilities. The future will be challenging for insurers worldwide. By making clear and deliberate choices about future sources of growth, and aligning their operating model, governance and capabilities to their chosen business model, insurers can position themselves for strong growth. Talk to Accenture to find out how these business models can lay the foundation for high performance.

1. Industrialisers 2.0 – create profitable growth by optimising and industrialising their operating models. They need a single, central governance authority to manage the business, and strong capabilities in operations, business architecture, marketing and distribution. 2. Value Pickers – leverage their strong position in a mature market to enter high-growth emerging markets. Their operating model and governance must balance optimisation and industrialisation in their home market with innovation and simplification in emerging markets. This requires strength in strategic planning; mergers, acquisitions and alliances; risk management; and people management.

For further information please contact: Glenn Sedgwick Asia Pacific Insurance Managing Director d.glenn.sedgwick@accenture.com w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

w h o’ s w h o Q& a // ton y F or wa r d

Windows 7 rollout so these initiatives play an important part in meeting our sustainability commitments. But perhaps the most important aspect of these initiatives is how they further improve BTFG’s agility – that is, our ability to support rapid changes. Simplified systems, a comprehensive management layer and a private service-oriented cloud will allow us to spend more time focusing on the business rather than tackling the complexity of the underlying infrastructure.

Fst Media: Many insurers are launching iPhone-enabled claims applications. How is BTFG positioned with respect to mobile technology; and what smartphone initiatives are in the pipeline? Forward: BTFG prides itself on being

tony forward chief informATion officer, Bt financial group Fst Media: BT Financial Group (BTFG) has invested in high definition video conferencing, desktop messaging tools, cloud computing and data centres. What opportunities do you see each of these initiatives creating for the business? Forward: There are two key reasons that BTFG has made these investments: agility and our employees. Our employees are geographically dispersed over five states and our focus on delivering state-of-the-art collaboration tools is aimed at enabling our employees to be more productive, improve the quality of their work experience, increase workplace flexibility, provide access to skilled resources and reduce the need to travel. 82

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Our focus on service-oriented infrastructure continues with our evolution into the private cloud. More than 60 per cent of our production workload is now virtualised and we are working on extracting the management layer so we can decrease time to service deployment for the business and effectively manage the use of our infrastructure. In parallel we have been actively reducing our operational complexity and leveraging the investments of the broader Westpac Group. The consolidation of the multiple BTFG data centres is in progress and we are using the opportunity to reduce duplication in platforms, standardise on management software and improve the resilience and security of our systems. Our data centre now supports all Group brands and includes a highly resilient and environmentally efficient power and cooling infrastructure. Data centre consolidation and virtualisation have reduced power consumption. We’ve also achieved energy savings by implementing desktop hibernation on the back of the

at the forefront of innovation, both in its financial products and the way in which it uses technology to bring them to market. In keeping with that we are, through our Innovation Centre, working with a variety of consumer technologies to improve accessibility to our services to suit our consumer’s lifestyle and desire for real time information wherever and whenever they want. Mobile technologies such as smartphones have been a focus of recent development work and through our Innovation Centre we are exploring opportunities to use smartphone and tablet technologies in our Advice and Private Banking business. The interesting thing about this space is determining what customers will value. Experience has shown us that looking at these mobile technologies as merely another channel to port existing applications too often results in poor take-up. A more effective approach is to first understand the unique characteristics of the devices and then how the consumer wants to leverage those capabilities within the full spectrum of the channels available to them. BTFG’s technology teams collaborate with the business in customer-centric design workshops to test and validate our approach, which in turn feeds back into our application design and R&D efforts.

Fst Media: BTFG is investing in its life and general insurance divisions. What role is IT playing in this expansion?

ton y F o r wa r d // w h o’ s w h o Q& a

Forward: Our technology teams work in partnership with our insurance business to develop and deliver technology solutions that enable them to meet their strategic goals. Our role is to develop software that allows our business to open new channels and deliver ‘easy to use’ software. Our Westpac Banking Group and St. George Bank financial advisers – as well as our Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) needs are critical to our development priorities. For IT this means focusing on the product sales and service lifecycle to ensure advisers have information at their fingertips to understand where each piece of business is in the often complex process. In our most recent project release we delivered desktop software that allows our premium Life Insurance product (BT Protection Plan) to be sold by IFAs who do not use BT’s Wrap platform. The other component of this release is a website that provides the capability for advisers to understand and manage the underwriting and ongoing processes with their clients. As part of the process we worked closely with our business to reengineer the insurance technology platforms to accelerate product development as part of the wider BTFG insurance strategy. This reengineering includes expanding the range of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) services already in use across BTFG systems.

in terms of offline ways to build our relationship with BT super for life customers, we have highly personalised touch points.

Fst Media: Can you elaborate on the technology in BT’s Wrap Platform?

whole new level to enable multiple client rebalancing and bulk trading as per their investment strategy. The service enables advisers to spend less time on administration and more face-to-face time with clients. Being internet based, clients have access to their investments at any time and from anywhere. At BT we are committed to improve the experiences of our customers and have recently launched two key enhancements – online password reissue on both the adviser and investor desktop and expanded dealer group services to include a new range of aggregated badge level reports up to dealer group enterprise. We also have a program of works currently underway across both platforms to enhance our marketing leading equities capabilities and include tax optimisation tools. I’m pleased to report our Wrap platforms are leading market share taking $1 in every $3 invested and 20 per cent of funds under administration.

Forward: At BTFG we have two innovative

Fst Media: How is BTFG utilising SOA?

Wrap platforms: BT, which is often white labelled or badged by larger dealer groups and the Asgard eWRAP platform, which services small independent advisers and is also badged for larger dealer groups and used by large institutional dealer groups. Our Wrap platforms provide a single point of access to a wide range of managed funds, listed securities, a cash account, margin lending and insurance. They make it easier to manage a client’s investment through consolidated reporting on one account. The main advantage is the consolidation of investment portfolio reporting and administration for advisers and clients. The BT Wrap Model Portfolios take these efficiencies to a

Forward: I’m delighted to say that it’s part of what we do and it’s a journey we have been on for a number of years. We have a wellestablished services bus that connects the customer front-end to our back-end systems. For example, in Super for Life we integrated some 75 systems. When faced with a new program there is no debate on how to connect systems or services; our services bus is our accepted way of integration. Fst Media: Given wealth management is a relationship-driven business, how can the personal element of customer service be transferred online?

Forward: We can transfer the personal element of customer service online by communicating with our customer via their preferred method or channel. We then tailor the interaction as we know who our customers are (refer to them by name not account number), understand the relationship they have with us (highlight their holdings) and also provide helpful guidance and suggestions to educate them (highlight their opportunities to grow their wealth or save money). Our award-winning innovative product Super for Life, which was designed to seamlessly integrate with online banking, is probably the best example of transferring customer service online. Our customers can see everything in one place and transact online. They can change their investment options, get insurance, add money from their personal account or request tax statements, balances and rates of return. In terms of offline ways to build our relationship with BT Super for Life customers, we have highly personalised touch points – our welcome packs and materials are really personalised and segmented to the customer life-stage. Fst Media: BTFG has made significant investments in customer-facing technology. Which areas are experiencing these changes; and what enhancements will customers see? Forward: We have made significant investments in our customer-facing technology across all areas and we will continue on this journey. It’s fair to say that pretty much each business will benefit from these changes. For some businesses, such as advice and private banking, it’s about giving our customers choice in how they interact with us and ensuring the best customer experience – whether it is online, though an adviser, financial planner or our contact centre.

Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? Forward: It’s the team we’ve built and I am enormously and constantly proud of the talent, drive and passion of our people.

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // b o b by l e h a n e

Bobby lehane chief operATing officer, AsiA pAcific – generAl insurAnce, Zurich financial services

Fst Media: As Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Zurich Financial Services (Zurich) what are your key priorities for the next 12 to 18 months; and how do you feel your previous role as CIO can give you a competitive advantage in this position? lehane: My priority is to work on defining and delivering an operations landscape for our businesses that will improve operating efficiency, enhance customer service and facilitate continued growth opportunities throughout APAC. Because of the work I have done in my capacity as CIO at Zurich (Australia and Asia Pacific & Middle East) there are many advantages: the business strategy is very clear to me; and the implications from an IT perspective are understood as are many of the opportunities for improving our operations.

From a stakeholder perspective, relationships are already in place and provide a great platform from which to drive significant operational transformation across the business. Had I come to this role from outside I think there would still be many advantages to the CIO background, such as the ability to develop a strategy and to mobilise large programs of work with the necessary skills and discipline; things that are critical to success as a CIO would be directly applicable to the COO role. Finally, there are many common themes that equally apply to operations, leverage of scale, consolidation of platforms and customer service.

Fst Media: Traditional insurers are focusing on online-only subsidiaries for attracting and retaining Gen-Y customers. Do you foresee this as the future of insurance? lehane: There are numerous ways to attract and retain Gen-Y customers, and of course online is a very significant option. I’m not sure organisations should limit themselves to online-only subsidiaries. In fact any proposition should form part of the end-to-end insurance value chain. We have a range of different business models across the APAC. In Japan we have enjoyed sustained success in appealing to the tech-savvy and discerning Gen-Ys. Mobile phones, online and even traditional telemarketing all contribute to a multipronged strategy. We’ve recently brought out a new product in Japan specifically targeted at Gen-Ys which recognises that their buying behaviour is different. It’s important not to lose sight of the product; Gen-Ys are aware of the many product choices they have, so any proposition needs to be compelling and priced correctly. Fst Media: What are the business objectives and deliverables of Zurich’s newly implemented funds automation platform? lehane: We recently implemented pControl and pQuant for our investments business in Australia. The first objective was to address a fairly significant risk associated with the legacy platform

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b ob by l e h a n e // w h o’ s w h o Q& a

and the many manual processes and workarounds. We wanted to reduce the probability of errors related to this. There were also some clear customer service improvement objectives. The platform now enables superior performance reporting for our customers and a far more streamlined and efficient unit pricing process. It has also freed us from the many constraints of the old platform.

Fst Media: How is Zurich’s smartphone channel evolving; and what new mobilebased initiatives can we expect to see in the next year? lehane: As mentioned earlier, you can’t look at this part of the market in isolation and anything you do needs to be as part of your insurance value chain. We are aware of the market evolution and have been positioning ourselves to take advantage of the changing smartphone landscape. LifeXpressMobile was launched in the second half of 2010; in fact Zurich was the first life insurer in Australia to offer a feature-rich life risk quotation application on the iPhone. LifeXpressMobile seamlessly blends into our insurance value chain offering continuing to leverage our very successful LifeXpress platform; it was well received in the market. In 2011 we continue to evaluate our position and also progressively make richer functionality available over the emerging mobile platforms. Fst Media: The volume of insurance claims is tipped to increase due to natural disasters across the country. How are you ensuring systems are kept abreast of sophisticated techniques used in fraudulent claims and identity theft? lehane: Being part of a large global organisation we benefit from the group investment in fraud detection systems and processes. Zurich has been investing in predictive modelling for fraud detection and we will leverage this investment where possible across the region. Clearly with this as with other opportunities to leverage

gen-ys are aware of the many product choices they have, so any proposition needs to be compelling and priced correctly.

group capabilities, it is important for the region to have a flexible architecture that allows for inexpensive local integration.

Fst Media: How is Zurich responding to the increasing customer demand of real-time interaction with insurers? lehane: This has been a significant focus in Australia across both the life and the general insurance segments. The investments in LifeXpress and Z.StreamXpress over the last couple of years have enabled rapid change of our product offering to respond to market needs and changes. It has also enabled more timely and responsive services to our intermediaries.

enhancing the Zurich strategy to ensure we continue to enjoy competitive advantage through wise IT decision-making.

Fst Media: How is your recruitment strategy changing to incorporate the budding Gen-Y workforce?

lehane: We continue to have very positive Gen-Y experiences and to recruit them into our teams. As I’ve said before the secret to attracting and retaining them for a useful amount of time is simple: provide them interesting, challenging work; treat them with respect; and understand that they are unlikely to be looking for a job for life. We have an excellent cadet program in Australia which has delivered some exceptional Gen-Ys into our workforce. We assist them in completing their third level education and they provide a rich vein of talent to the group. This program has been running for a number of years now and has proved real value-add to our business. One of our Australian IT cadets is currently undertaking a semester of study in Singapore and will then work with our Singapore operation before returning to Australia. Taking advantage of our regional and global footprint and the associated opportunities this provides to work across the globe is also something that makes us an attractive proposition to Gen-Ys.

in formulating Zurich’s ongoing IT strategy?

Fst Media: Every leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours?

lehane: In my previous role I was heavily involved in formulating our regional IT strategy. With my transition to this role I will continue to be responsible for its execution and evolution, albeit at a level further removed. This is quite a positive as I believe the chances of delivering successful and sustained change increase through continuity of strategy and message. I would also add that as CIO I oversaw the formulation of IT strategy, but people far smarter than I devised the key components of the strategy. I anticipate that going forward these thought leaders will continue to play a critical role in developing and

lehane: As someone on my team pointed out recently, legacy is not always a good thing, especially when one talks about technology. One of the things I’m most proud of following my time as CIO at Zurich is the development and progression of people within my team. Most of the original team have progressed to more senior regional and group roles and are making a significant contribution. This reflects very well on the Australian business and Australian talent as a whole. As for my new role, it’s too early to say, however continued focus on building a strong team that delivers industry-best business results is likely to be key.

Fst Media: As COO, how involved are you

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // s t e v e c ol es

steve coles chief informATion & Business improvemenT officer, allianZ australia insurance

when customers can easily and securely connect with our core processing systems. Our current focus has been to build an architecture that does exactly that. We call this the Allianz Digital Architecture and it includes access to a range of services that can be deployed internally and externally across a wide variety of devices.

Fst Media: Allianz is still using legacy technology to underpin its operations. When will you be looking to change this? coles: Allianz has established a componentbased architecture to meet the needs of the business. This includes a variety of modern and sometimes mature technologies that co-exist as part of a common architectural framework. We don’t use the term legacy at Allianz. We do use a 30-year-old package called Polisy that we have tailored to meet our needs, but we call this our Strategic Policy Administration component. In fact, the advances in integration technology and service-based architectures has helped breathe increased life into this technology. This has enabled improved agility and functionality at a lower cost through the re-use of existing investment.

Fst Media: From a customer service perspective, what have been the benefits of Allianz’s interactive social collaboration portal, My Allianz? coles: My Allianz is part of our framework to be digitally connected with our customers and partners. The internet is no longer an emerging channel for us but is now the dominant channel for direct customer sales and the My Allianz portal supports this. We have also seen an increase in customers using the internet to lodge claims electronically. Our goal is to deliver more value to customers by enabling better access to products and services.

Fst Media: Many insurers are automating the claims process via mobile technology. Do you see this as the nextgeneration of digital insurance? coles: Undoubtedly, but in our opinion the real value will only be realised

who ’s wh o of fs i

Fst Media: Allianz has been virtualised for a number of years now. What is the next step for virtualisation?

coles: We achieved significant benefits from virtualising our Wintel environment running web applications onto a Z10 Mainframe running Z Linux. Our next step is to migrate our web and cobol applications (including Polisy) onto a new Z196 mainframe. Our focus will then be to leverage the application synergies through operating our core applications on a single mainframe. We have looked at Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) but have put this on hold given the maturity of the technology and the business case around establishing a central server heavy Disaster Recovery (DR) capability. However, I would expect this to be a sensible way forward for us in the future when the market develops. Fst Media: In your opinion, do you feel that the interest in cloud justifies the attention?

coles: We use some cloud technology and see this as another tool in our ‘IT kit bag’ rather than radically changing our approach. I don’t think that today’s cloud substance justifies the hype and attention. However I am confident that this will change in time when the market matures to enable different types of models. For example, a robust cloud DR offering could have enabled us to justify a VDI business case.

Fst Media: What are your IT priorities for the upcoming year? coles: Our goal as an IT function is to help our business become a leader in sales and distribution, and operational efficiency and effectiveness. Our key strategies to meet this goal include: • Extending the Allianz Digital Architecture with a focus on sales and claims • Working across the business to embed Business Process Management • Continuing to maintain our low level of IT expenses at around two per cent of revenue

Fst Media: What does it take to be a successful CIO in today’s environment? coles: I believe that a key skill for any CIO is the ability to manage what are often competing demands. For example, we are asked to deliver more services but at the same time lower our costs. Speed to market and agility is key but we also want robust and reliable solutions. We should continue to change and improve our environments but have a low risk appetite. In the workplace, there is a desire to offer flexibility of device but with the same level of reliability and management cost.

Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? coles: Helping my company achieve its goals of leadership in sales and distribution, and operational efficiency and effectiveness. In addition, to have built an IT capability through sound investment in people and technology that will sustain this advantage into the future.

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Accelerating the pace of change in wealth management operations Milestone Group explains how to turbo charge large-scale transformational change projects in the fund servicing arena so that there is a faster pay-off from a lower investment. Having been on hold for the last few years, major change projects are now back on the corporate agenda. On top of the overwhelming need to reduce cost, change is being driven by the influx of new regulation and risk, as well as the requirement for greater transparency. In short, it’s now a business necessity to embrace change and as a consequence most firms are good at developing an effective vision for that change. Companies know where they want to get to. The pain of change tends to come from poorly executed projects that take too High ROI long, cost too much and don’t deliver anticipated benefits. All too often transformational journeys are led away from the critical path because, with the best of intentions, firms are spending too much time and effort on tasks that they think they need to do. Instead of driving the process, companies commit too much resource and get distracted by reengineering the processes.

Predictable benefit timeline

Phased top down delivery

But it needn’t be like that. There is a new way of doing things. Solutions are now available that are closely aligned to operational transformation.

So, instead of trying to conceive projects and the right supporting solutions, from first principles, it’s now possible to take a platform that already exists and is proven to work and then tune it to your precise needs.

This type of thinking is a world away from the siloed operating models supported with traditional software architectures that are all too common in the industry. Instead technology really can and should be an accelerator of operational excellence. Known end Programmes supported by a single, seamless, state proven platform that has at its core, a Standard fundamental, in-depth knowledge of the process product domain and the surrounding templates processes inevitably have a much greater certainty of outcome in terms of timeline and return on investment than conventional projects. Known Effective end production design design Focusing on optimising individual pieces of the puzzle with no known end state risks the delays, compromised outcomes and poor return on investment associated Defined with many change programmes. target metrics A platform that brings together the End to end underlying fund servicing application(s) with control framework data management, reconciliation and business process management or process control in one system means that faster, more efficient change can be achieved.

Just imagine if someone had already examined all the processes under review within your organisation and worked out how they could be radically changed for the better.

For further information please contact: Mark Neary, Managing Director Client Relationships & Business Development Asia Pacific E: mark.neary@milestonegroup.com.au

Milestone Group’s pControl software platform with embedded process optimisation offers a new architecture approach to support and empower efficient technology led business transformation.

www.milestonegroup.com.au w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

w h o’ s w h o Q& a // b r a d au r isc h

Brad aurisch chief informATion officer, perpetual

reduction in physical storage; reduced our physical data centre needs; a 30 per cent reduction in server infrastructure demands; and dramatically improved the efficiency and effectiveness of our state office computing services through desktop virtualisation. The multi-tenanted model is where we need to head, pooling our commodity needs with others and ensuring there is scale to continuously improve the service and harness that for Perpetual. In the few years we’ve been with salesforce.com we’ve seen constant capability improvements and stability easily outpacing what we’d delivered previously. We’re always looking at how we apply this across infrastructure, shared services and business applications.

Fst Media: Perpetual is among the few organisations to have championed the single customer view. How has this given you a competitive advantage?

Fst Media: What are your top IT priorities for the next 12 to 18 months? aurisch: Our priority now is moving us from rebuild every five years, to a place where we are constantly bringing in the benefits of advances going on outside. We’ve realised this with our use of salesforce.com. I want to do the same in our shared services and line of business systems. This year it’s telephony, contact centres, messaging and a number of business capabilities that are getting closer to commodity services. Fst Media: What value have cloud computing and virtualisation brought to your team; and what upcoming cloudbased initiatives are in the pipeline?

aurisch: Michael Salas, our Head of Infrastructure and Operations, has led a great virtualisation campaign: the team have virtualised over 50 per cent of our storage, servers and desktop. The program has already helped us dramatically reduce our capacity needs – we have achieved over 55 per cent

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aurisch: Of course we get the benefits of understanding product and service mix, but a benefit I hadn’t expected is how this unified view allows us to improve our reporting. For the second year in a row we have lowered the turn-around on our annual and tax returns for registry-based products. The challenge with reporting is knowing when a specific customer product mix is finalised for the year and ready to report on. With our improvements in centralised customer data we are able to minimise the delay at a customer level, minimising the wait for reporting. We’ve had tremendous compliments over the last two years as a result. Fst Media: Perpetual has been ‘virtualised’ for a number of years. What is the next stage of virtualisation for Perpetual; and what have been the business benefits? aurisch: We’re at various stages of our virtualisation journey across desktops, servers and storage. Over the past two years our businesses have needed to rapidly commission new offices or have needed to roll services into newly acquired businesses. Our virtualisation strategy has meant we have been able to establish these offices in

a time frame we never could have met if we continued with a physical model. Our ESX capability has allowed us to commission additional corporate service capacity, Citrix has meant we can run up additional desktop services in a fraction of the time we could previously and both ESX and Citrix now run off our NetApp virtualised storage that dramatically reduces both the storage demands and the cost to manage the data lifecycle through to backup.

Fst Media: How is technology changing your customers’ wealth management consumption habits; and which specific technologies are driving this change? aurisch: The PEW research centre has research on news consumption that dates back over 20 years. Their latest survey reported that online consumption of news eclipsed the newspaper in popularity in June this year. You can see this driven by two factors – first, capability leaders like Apple have stripped away layers of obfuscation and created interfaces that enable the most non-technical user to focus on what they want to discover rather than the tools for doing it. The second trend is the data, structured or syntactic web – greatly improved access, reuse and consumption of data. Our menu and the manner of services our clients experience elsewhere in their lives are driving their expectations of us – a greater focus on timeliness and portability of information and function. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? aurisch: Our vision for technology is to be a top five source of advantage for Perpetual. There are many great assets in the Perpetual mix so delivering on that is a long-term challenge, but we have everything we need to get there. A leadership team that is passionate, an enterprise architecture team that prides itself on customer alignment, a delivery team dedicated to realising the potential in our strategies and an operations team that prides itself on managing a great business platform.

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // M e l a n i e k n e a l e

melanie Kneale chief operATing And Technology officer, niB health funds

Fst Media: What are your top IT priorities for the next 12 to 18 months?

kneale: My number one IT priority is responding at speed – so we have the flexibility, nimbleness and excellence in terms of doing it once and the best way possible. To deliver on this our focus is purely on improving how we deliver solutions from specifying our needs to testing the solution. Some of the new IT solutions we are launching this year to support our business growth objectives are some exciting new consumer sites and online services as well as ongoing enhancement of the customer service experience in collaboration with our internal knowledge management and campaign management tools. Fst Media: Which customer channels are proving to be the most effective for interacting with nib Health Fund’s (nib) Gen-Y customers? kneale: I think the key is choice and integration. There is never going to be

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one channel that serves all needs and all demographics. Having said that I think mobile is the one that is going to take off the most in terms of customers’ expectations and capabilities. Our key area of growth is in the under 40-year-old age group; this group wants choice in terms of how they can access services. In particular they want ease of use and a quick response. To this end we have invested in and continue to invest in: • mobile – we are the only health insurer to provide mobile claiming and quotes • online claiming with the ability to upload receipts • touch screen claiming and service pods • video to replace text information and education • channel integration through click to call from our website through to our call centre • click to chat • information sites to assist our customers in selecting appropriate care options and further consumer empowerment • social media The challenge is to ensure the innovation is relevant to their needs, is simple and not unnecessarily gimmicky. The other is to keep ahead. We are not naive enough to believe that our competitors will not emulate us or even leapfrog us so we need to keep focused on what our customers want and deliver on it quickly.

Fst Media: Can you elaborate on nib’s iPhone-enabled claims automation application; and are there plans to expand this offering to other mobile providers such as BlackBerry, Android and Microsoft 7?

kneale: Yes, we are the only health insurer to offer mobile claiming and quoting and we want to maintain that edge – via mobile and the web. At this stage it is only available as an iPhone application, however we will expand this to other platforms in the not too distant future. Fst Media: What do you regard as the key security concerns associated with mobile claims; and how is nib overcoming these?

kneale: Mobile claims are no different from the potential risks with online claims, such as someone submitting a claim that is fraudulent. It is important to remember that the extent of the risk is limited by the relatively low dollar amount per claim and the annual limit per ancillary modality (hospital and medical claims are done by the providers not online or via mobile). We also have maximum thresholds for the value of claims paid online or via a mobile until the receipts are received and validated. If the proof is not cited, the online or mobile claiming ability is suspended. We also have security points at which the services will be suspended. For example, if the volume or value of claims in a day exceeds a given threshold. In addition to this, the logon is via a password and the claims are paid electronically into the customer’s nominated bank account. Fst Media: What do you see as today’s most over-hyped technology trends? kneale: I have always believed social media has incredible power to advance or destroy initiatives. Exactly how this plays out for businesses is still to be fully understood. I think it is how you respond to it that is key. It is also vital to ensure if you participate you do so in a way that is credible and you are perceived to be legitimate. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? kneale: I re-read what I said a few years ago when I started in this role and I don’t believe it has changed: that I made it easy for my team to achieve the results. I believe my job is to smooth the path to empower them to do what they do well. I would like them to say I provide decisions, reason and resources where required and then I trust them. In terms of life and my team, I would like them to think I treated them with respect as individuals, showed my human side and above all kept perspective that family comes first no matter how passionate we are about work.

M at t M a nso u r // w h o’ s w h o Q& a

matt mansour chief informATion officer, ge capital australia & neW Zealand

Fst Media: What channels have you found to be the most effective at acquiring and retaining customers?

Mansour: We’ve made continuous improvements to our channels to help improve the customer experience. From an acquisition perspective, we have improved our B2C and B2B online application portals through lean initiatives whereby experience has been improved; we now have 99 per cent of our card applications coming through these two digital channels. In terms of digital servicing we invested in a new online platform that enables personal one-to-one service interaction where customers can receive information that is relevant to their account. We also deployed a speech recognition Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform that provides a far richer telephony self-service offering and smart routing to ensure our customers get the information they need. However, it doesn’t stop there; we plan on continuing to leverage technology and innovation to improve the customer service

offering across a broader range of channels including SMS, email, mobile and a range of call centre technology enhancements to help our staff manage customer enquiries.

Fst Media: GE has invested in desktop, server and storage virtualisation. Do you feel cloud is the next step in the natural progression of a virtualised environment? Mansour: I wouldn’t say that cloud is a natural progression of a virtualised environment. There are many benefits you can gain from virtualisation in its own right, if done properly – such as efficiencies in cost, support and provisioning. We leverage cloud technologies in various application spaces where it makes sense. Where we can see the benefits of a cloud offering both locally and globally, we will work with our partners to provide the right solution. Being a global company, leveraging private cloud infrastructure has many advantages. We have several projects underway in this space. We are moving more and more away from maintaining commodities in their own right. The critical goal here is to focus our spend and efforts where the customer needs it most. Spending millions on maintenance, licence annuities and so on does not necessarily help this. As an industry we need to continue to move to whole of service offerings. Fst Media: What are the primary objectives and deliverables of GE’s IT transformation project; and how are you progressing? Mansour: The key objective of our technology transformation has been to enhance efficiency and agility, which will in turn better service our customers. Reducing the amount of infrastructure and data centres is already resulting in multimillion dollar savings. We realised massive productivity benefits with a complete revamp of our online portal for credit cards. Leveraging cloud solutions such as Salesforce has also provided a better user experience, greater analytics reporting and the ability to look at global solutions. Fst Media: How does the IT business cope with changes to the National Consumer

Credit Protection (NCCP) regulation; and what has been the impact on technology?

Mansour: The implications of the legislation reach across a significant component of the organisation and systems. We’ve embraced the change, not only to ensure compliance, but to ensure the best outcome for our customers. Fst Media: What emerging technologies are you keeping an eye on right now? Mansour: The offerings that come from a cloud point of view will significantly ramp up as people get comfortable around data management and security. The ability to get concepts up and running without the traditional massive capital outlay changes the game in product development. I also believe payment systems will continue to develop. With the advances in analytics capability there will be a further drive for getting the right information in real time and in the right space. The ability to process data at that speed is going to move data provisioning to a whole new level. Fst Media: What has been your proudest achievement since you started at GE? Mansour: Having been at GE for eight years, I have had a lot of exceptional moments. I think the biggest achievement would be building the technology organisation that we have today. There are some truly exceptional people across the IT organisation, and we have a deep culture of pride in providing technology to the organisation and our customers. The team sets an incredibly high bar which they consistently meet. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? Mansour: It’s quite simple really – I want to have delivered a simple, scalable technology platform that provides a key competitive advantage for GE Capital and its customers – run by the best technology team in the industry.

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // g r eg M caw e e n e y

educational content and special offers. We have also been running investor webinars which again are a great low-cost way of reaching customers in an environment that suits them. Our social media strategy is continually evolving but we’ve known for a long time that you cannot stay out of social media.

Fst Media: What advice can you give IT executives on how to protect against the risk of reputational damage with the advent of social media-supported products and services?

greg mcaweeney group execuTive, regionAl mAnAger, raBodirect australia & neW Zealand Fst Media: As a specialist online-only savings and investment bank, how do you envisage innovation will play a role in RaboDirect’s future IT roadmap? Mcaweeney: Innovation is one of our core brand values and as a direct bank we have to ensure we continually innovate whether to lower costs further, deepen loyalty or differentiate our products and services in a highly competitive category. We are currently planning a core banking upgrade that will dramatically improve flexibility, lower development costs and open our systems to third party services. And with four direct banks in different geographical markets we can test different concepts and share learnings and experiences as well as lower the cost to market. Fst Media: There is a strong interactive presence on the RaboDirect website (blogs, 92

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Twitter, Facebook, videos and a newsletter). Which social media tool has generated the most customer interest thus far; and why?

Mcaweeney: Last time I checked we are still the only bank that publishes a blog on its website and this is an important signal to our customers about our openness and transparency. We are not afraid to showcase the good and the bad on our site for all to see. It is important to be active in the social media space. We can learn from our customers, interact with them in channels they prefer to use and determine when and how we should and shouldn’t be involved in people’s social networks. We recently ran a behavioural experiment to highlight how people are losing out on $4.7 billion in lost interest by leaving their savings lying idle in transaction and low interest savings accounts. A ‘money tree’ was erected near Circular Quay with real $5 notes and hidden cameras filmed peoples’ behaviour. The video has been viewed over 90,000 times on YouTube so far driven mainly by Twitter. Our newsletter is popular with customers and prospects alike with healthy open rates. We aim to keep the balance between investor

Mcaweeney: Sounds obvious but a starting point should be a social media strategy. Rather than just jumping in because you feel you ‘need to be doing something’. A coherent strategy which outlines your objectives, the implementation plan, resourcing needs and reporting tools will put some structure around your social media activities. More and more companies are implementing social media guidelines for their staff which outline how staff are expected to behave when representing the company on social media. They are coming to terms with the reality that social media is mainstream. There are many celebrated cases of staff who have uploaded damaging videos online (remember Domino’s pizza?) which go viral and can cause huge reputational damage. A balanced social media policy recognises the reality of social media and the opportunities of using it for work purposes with the increased risks as posts on social networks can live for years. But it’s not enough just to have a policy. It’s important that staff members are trained in it and if appropriate, contribute to the development of it. Also, banning social networks from the workplace isn’t helpful or appropriate, particularly for marketing teams who may need to use these tools every day. Using reporting tools is also important as you need to be aware of the tone and sentiment of what is being said about your company on a regular basis. This can alert you to any negative issues and you can participate in social networks where appropriate in a transparent manner to engage your audience. This is something I have done successfully in the past.

g r eg M caw e e n e y // w h o’ s w h o Q& a

Fst Media: As General Manager, how do you reconcile technology investment with RaboDirect’s business objectives? Mcaweeney: As a direct bank without branches our two biggest costs are technology and marketing. With our business model the two often go hand-in-hand as we seek to grow our customer base through the development of our online proposition. We run a low-cost operational model and share systems across all our direct banks which helps drive costs down. Fst Media: What do you envisage as the next-generation of direct banking? Mcaweeney: Online banking is quite mature in the adoption curve so the real growth will come in mobile where we will see service offerings explode. Mobile will become mainstream and will gain penetration at a much quicker rate than online banking achieved. Developments in the mobile space will open up more than just everyday banking. We will see great strides in mobile billing and payments, locationbased services and a battle will increasingly be fought between traditional and nontraditional financial services providers in the payments space. Online personal financial management has had a number of false dawns and in the next generation we may see more customerfriendly propositions that achieve greater take-up rates. Fst Media: As the online channel gains greater traction across retail banking, do you envisage banking becoming a purely virtual service in the future?

Mcaweeney: Technological improvements are delivering the capability to truly enhance the customer experience, provide utility to the customer and engage on a one-toone level. We are seeing this in customer service, expansion of mobile and increasing sophistication in the online banking channel. However, there remains a role for bricks and mortar. More sophisticated products with high involvement can sometimes be better supported in-branch but the nature

Mcaweeney: As an AAA-rated bank,

it is important to be active in the social media space. we can learn from our customers, interact with them in channels they prefer to use and determine when and how we should and shouldn’t be involved in people’s social networks.

of branches will further evolve with less transactional activity being undertaken in the coming years.

Fst Media: What are your top priorities for the next 12 to 18 months? Mcaweeney: We are going through plenty of change within our global direct banking group right now. Our major focus is to keep growing our brand, building the deposit base and recruiting new customers. From an IT perspective we are undergoing a core banking upgrade and improving the customer experience is a major focus of this program. Mobile is high on the agenda and we plan to trial mobile concepts in one of our European banks and then roll it out in Australia. Fst Media: As General Manager, how involved are you in formulating RaboDirect’s ongoing IT roadmap?

Mcaweeney: Customer experience and value are leading for us and this dictates the direction of our IT spend. Thus the business is very involved in the decision-making process as we plot our way forward. And of course we are an online business so IT and the business are inseparable. Fst Media: What are some of the trends in security that you are keeping an eye on right now?

security is always top of our minds and this is no different when it comes to online security. For many years we have operated two-factor authentication via our Digipass system which is run by Vasco. This offers far superior security to the one-factor authentication that is still widely used here, ie, customer number and password/PIN. Some of the global trends that we see include: • The explosion in usage of social media is being successfully exploited by criminals particularly for identity theft, which is growing • Phishing remains a threat and has developed into in-session phishing, spear phishing, vishing and smishing. • More complex man-in-the-middle attacks and trojans • The increasing adoption of mobile banking also inevitably increases risk. Customers generally make a trade-off between security and convenience and often accept lower security in favour of convenience. However, we take a different view in Rabobank and adopt very high levels of security to protect our customers’ money, identities and the bank’s reputation. We are evaluating other forms of two-factor authentication to improve convenience while maintaining security.

Fst Media: Every leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? Mcaweeney: I launched RaboDirect in Ireland and ran it for four years before returning to Australia to take over RaboPlus as it was then known. My immediate goal was to restructure the business, rebrand it and set it on the path for sustainable growth. We are on the right path here and are now facing our next challenge in the lifecycle of our direct bank. When my time is up with RaboDirect I would like to leave behind a direct bank that stands on the side of the consumer, an innovator and a bank that empowers Aussies to take back control of their finances. Along the journey I hope that all of our team members enrich their skills and share the same passion to challenge the dominant players in our industry.

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // ton y r i tc h i e

tony ritchie

have adequate banking and merchant point of sale infrastructure.

vice presidenT, Technologies JApAn, AsiA pAcific & AnZ, american eXpress

Fst Media: Card issuers have recently migrated to EMV chip technology to enhance speed and security. What new technologies are enhancing the payments experience? ritchie: The technology that I believe is having the most impact on the customer payments experience is contactless chip cards, both at merchant point of sale and in transport applications, such as the Octopus card in Hong Kong and the Oyster card in London. Contactless payments are much more convenient for low value, high frequency transactions. Fst Media: Card issuers have touted P2P payments, Near Field Communication (NFC) and ‘bumping’ technology as the next big thing in payments. Do you agree?

Fst Media: What are the key emerging technologies you see shaping the face of payments in the next 12 to 24 months?

ritchie: There are four areas of emerging technology within the Asia Pacific region that are expected in the near future. The first is upgrading magnetic stripe debit and credit cards to Europay, Mastercard and VISA (EMV) compliance to strengthen the authentication process and reduce the risk of fraud. This is being achieved by adding a contact based integrated circuit (chip) to the card, often in conjunction with a PIN. The second area is adding a contactless integrated circuit (chip) capability to the card which supports faster payments either at merchant point of sale or in transport applications. Mobile payments are also starting to take off and these are used in a similar way to the cards with contactless capability. The last area is providing the capability to make Person-to-Person (P2P) payments via SMS; typically this is more common in the developing economies which don’t

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ritchie: These technologies are all interesting solutions. I would expect different rates of deployment across countries within this region i.e. P2P payments are likely to be more common in developing countries while ‘bumping’ technologies require more advanced smartphones, more typically found in the more affluent economies. The key barriers to adoption are likely to be the lack of common technical standards across the different types of smartphone hardware and operating systems and the variety of competing business models. Fst Media: How is American Express addressing key security concerns with respect to mobile and contactless payments? ritchie: American Express places a very high priority on protecting our customer’s data and preventing fraud. We are working with key international industry bodies like EMVCo on the standards for contactless and mobile, and security is a major focus area. American Express will also implement additional capabilities when necessary to further improve the security of these products. Fst Media: What are your top IT priorities for the next 12 to 18 months?

ritchie: We have significantly increased our investment in the online and mobile channels and these channels will continue to be a business priority. We are also investing in Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) as this will allow us to more quickly replicate capabilities across different channels in the future. Fst Media: American Express in the United States recently launched Currency, an iPhoneenabled social media tool that provides financial advice and money management for users. Are there plans for an Asia Pacific wide roll out; why/why not? ritchie: I’m not able to comment on specific plans for individual countries or regions but increasingly we are developing solutions globally and deploying them across multiple markets. This is one of the advantages of being a global company. However, we need to take account of local customer expectations and regulations, so it’s not always possible to deploy exactly the same solution in all locations. Fst Media: Which payments channel is proving to be the most sought after by your customers; and why? ritchie: Card payments at the physical merchant point of sale continue to be the dominant channel. However, the categories that are growing the most rapidly include vending machines and parking meters, online purchases and signatureless transactions for low value items. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? ritchie: I’ve been privileged in my career to have contributed to some major innovations such as BPay in Australia, but what I’m most proud of as a leader is the teams that I have built and the people that I have developed. Looking back on my career, my greatest satisfaction has been gained from the people I have had the privilege to work with and watching them go on to bigger and better things.

C o - S ponSo r e d a r t i Cle

Business Analytics: A new model for enabling agile enterprise decision making IT business leaders are facing increasing pressure to meet stakeholder demands and expectations that enable them to make quicker business decisions with confidence. A successful information technology executive must meet increasing levels of competing demands for business analytics to: • Operate at faster speeds to support evolving market structures, changing value chains and shifting business models • Evolve to a flexible business analytics architecture and meet increasing demand for analytics solutions • Respond to growing regulatory requirements • Increase technology efficiency and productivity • Optimise investment and operating costs. Demand is rising for organisations to make fact-based, analytically driven decisions. There is a thirst for integrated data within a robust framework to deliver discovery-based analytics and operational analytical decision making. New thinking is required to move IT from a traditional delivery model to a seamless, process-based model for business decision making. Users are also being asked to improve business operations across the value chain and solve complex business issues using both simple and sophisticated analytical methods. There is increasing pressure to effectively manage IT operations and budgets, at the same time enabling a new generation of business analytics applications, tools and processes. The challenge is to balance enterprise analytics without stifling innovation and over investing in multiple point solutions. For IT business leaders, enabling better decision making through business analytics requires a new model, fresh ways of thinking and innovative assessment of business systems. The choice of a robust enterprise analytics framework over continued development of individual business-unit data centres based on individual standards is evident. Line-of-business demand for business analytics has spawned a need to build a business analytics framework with appropriate operational and discovery environments. A key differentiating requirement of business analytics environments is the ability to move beyond reactive, Business Intelligence-based ad hoc decisions to proactive exploration, which leads to transformational decisions. By using more advanced quantitative methods, analysts can challenge fundamental business models and evolve them into new models that support top-line organisational growth.

Business analytics stretches beyond the simple ad hoc decision process by providing a seamless mechanism for inputting data and feeding results back into operational processes. Empowering discovery-based decisions requires not only quality data, but the ability to transform that data into predictive insights. Finding the right technology framework to advance your business and enable innovation can be difficult. But it is even more difficult to try to build and implement such a framework on your own. At SAS, we have developed new technologies and solutions to support and enable enterprise analytics frameworks in high-performance operating environments which are capable of addressing the competing demands of CIOs and business users. The SAS® Business Analytics framework provides you with a centralised, coherent and manageable environment to support the critical business functions of the enterprise and enable innovation – while maintaining IT leadership and governance, reducing costs and gaining maximum return from your existing technology investment.

Paul Franks General Manager, Financial Services SAS Australia and New Zealand

Access thought leadership and insights from SAS to drive your business performance at www.sas.com/thoughtleadership SAS Institute Australia Pty Limited 300 Burns Bay Road Lane Cove NSW 2066 Contact: Paul Franks, General Manager, Financial Services Phone: + 61 2 9428 0428 Website: www.sas.com/australia Email: info@oz.sas.com

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w h o’ s w h o Q& a // b r i a n Fa i r

Brian fair

Fst Media: What are your top IT priorities for 2011/2012?

chief informATion officer, Wesfarmers insurance

Fair: From a business perspective, we are continuing to drive profitable growth in channels and segments that we have perhaps not given as much attention to in the past. This includes initiatives such as the work we are doing with Coles in the personal lines space. A major priority is to ensure that the technology we use to support this drive is fit for purpose and equal to the task. Also, we continue to look at ways of either modernising our core processing systems, or of insulating these from some of the demands posed by the growth of more contemporary channels. In our New Zealand businesses we are well progressed along the replacement path, while in Australia we are focused on enhancing the channel experience. On top of all this we have the typical but still important issues of the day to contend with – seeking opportunities to leverage social media both internally and externally, modernising our core infrastructure, the

growth of the mobile platform – issues that face most companies in today’s environment. Collectively these consume significant resources and capacity.

Fst Media: How does your dual focus on retail customers and brokerage affect your uptake and use of new platforms such as mobile? Fair: We operate under quite a federated model at Wesfarmers Insurance, much in the same way that Wesfarmers itself operates. While we continue to look for ways to leverage our scale and the reach of our operations, we understand that there are limits we have to accept. Geography, business focus, business performance – these all have an influence on where we draw the line between sharing and commonality, and discrete solution. The needs of a retail customer looking for the best car insurance deal from Coles are very different from a major commercial client who demands technical expertise and personal attention. Our solutions reflect this difference, across all platforms we put out there. There is always the drive to seek that lowest common denominator on platform and infrastructure, but we embrace the need to differentiate where this make sense. Fst Media: How are Wesfarmers Insurance’s (WI) systems and services keeping up with the increased regularity of claims in relation to natural disasters? Fair: The scale of disasters we’ve all had to contend with this year is unprecedented. Speaking with people who have been in the industry for more than 20 years, there hasn’t been a year like this before – and everybody hopes we don’t have another one. The volumes we’ve had to deal with over the past few months have been well above normal, but it is a credit to our staff – both broking and underwriting – that we’ve managed to keep things more or less straight and level, and by all accounts have been able get our clients back on their feet with minimal delays. Changes we’ve been gradually making to our claims systems include the broader rollout of the ‘paperless’ claim, whereby the

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b r i a n Fa i r // w h o’ s w h o Q& a

majority of data items are collected without the use of paper claim forms. This has really helped to streamline the process. Electronic claims processing has proved its worth during this trying time. In addition to the disasters in Australia, we have also had to deal with the Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand. On the underwriting side, we are fortunate enough to have upgraded our core claims processing system just over two years ago, so we were well placed to deal with the spike in volumes caused by the earthquakes.

As we make more in-roads into the consumer space the ability to consolidate customer views just provides so much opportunity for the cross and up-sell process.

typically increase as claim rates rise. How is risk managed from a technology perspective?

claims fraud is unfortunately part of the business of being in insurance. We employ a combination of system-based detection and control processes and the subjective review by our experienced claims officers to try to keep this to a minimum. On the systems side, there are certain correlations that you can have your claims systems search for during the claims process. We look for trends, triggers, and inconsistencies, and use these when we find them to flag potential problems. We also work with industry bodies when it comes to more systematic cases. You can get fairly sophisticated with scenario and correlation analysis, and ultimately this will yield better results. But I’ll be the first to say that we aren’t there yet.

Fst Media: Does social media deliver business benefit to insurers and if so, how can this channel best be utilised?

Fair:

The proliferation of social media is not something you can afford to ignore. Social media does give you some insight on the prevailing zeitgeist, and this in itself can provide both guidance and a degree of intelligence about what is pushing people’s buttons. The use of these same techniques within the boundaries of our organisation is something that we are focusing on at the moment. Internal social networks and a greater drive

Fst Media: You have said insurers should use technology to learn from the past and predict future trends. What do you see as the next frontier for internal technology use to deliver better business processes?

Fst Media: Incidence of insurance fraud

Fair: Working to minimise the impact of

On the broking side this has even higher relevance, particularly when we start thinking about the cross-over possible between private and small business or corporate offerings. There are other things that probably fall into this category: straight-through processing, analytics, streamlined access to risk data, mobility – the list goes on. Depending on your needs at any given time, and the state of the market, I think any of these could achieve prominence.

towards collaboration is something that can yield real benefits. We are concentrating our efforts on understanding how to enjoy these benefits first. I think that as an industry we still have some way to go to appreciate what social media means for us. Do we remain passive and reactive? Is there a place for something as staid as financial services on Facebook and Twitter, or does it just look like you’re trying too hard? Do people really want an application on their iPhone from their insurance company? There are quite a few questions to consider.

Fst Media: A single customer view is regarded as the ‘holy grail’. Do you agree this is a key goal for insurers today; and how close is WI to achieving it? Fair: Claiming ‘single customer view’ as the ‘holy grail’ is pretty serious. Is it the objective that we pursue at the expense of all others? No. Is it something we keep top of mind and try to incorporate wherever we look to change how we view and interact with our customers? Absolutely. As we make more in-roads into the consumer space the ability to consolidate customer views just provides so much opportunity for the cross and up-sell process. We might not have the range of products that you find in a bank, for instance, but most short-term insurers have a fair repertoire these days. Good to be able to present a fullservice offering.

Fair: Many companies in our industry have some form of business process engine in place, defining and governing their core processes. We use the Pega product suite for this purpose within a number of our underwriting areas. Once you’ve done the hard yards in defining and deploying these managed processes, I think that the next step, and one that we are giving increasing priority to, is to become expert at the use of the analytical capability that these engines provide. This gives you a wealth of data that can be used to fine-tune and streamline processes, and to identify bottlenecks and unnecessary interventions. In some ways it’s like having a digital time-and-motion expert looking at what you are doing, and in some cases providing you with guidance as to how you can improve these processes. Fst Media: Every IT leader, particularly at your level has some legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours? Fair: Change for the better, leaving the company in a better state than I found it in. Nobody can afford to stagnate in today’s market. Business needs to move, technology needs to move with it. If one can leave a role and look back on a set of material accomplishments, on things that have made a difference, then I think that you can consider that a success.

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Accelerating Profit Growth Through Innovation

(Left to right): Ananth Basavaraju, Director, Insurance, ANZ, TCS; Paul Detheridge, Executive General Manager, Enterprise Customer Development, Suncorp; Steve Coles, Chief Information & Business Improvement Officer, Allianz; Matthew Palmer, Head of Strategy & Innovation, Insurance, UK & Europe, TCS; Murray Howe, Executive Manager, Group Digital Strategy & Innovation, Suncorp; Neil Whiteing, Group Chief Information Officer, IAG; Deborah Hadwen, Country Manager, ANZ, TCS; Sanjeev Gupta, Head of Technology & Projects, Wesfarmers General Insurance; Andrew Boldeman, Chief Executive Officer, Group Life, TOWER; Eric Reisenwitz, Chief Marketing & Distribution Officer, MetLife; James Ingham, Head of Information Technology, Group Investment Division, QBE; John Myler, General Manager, Direct & Life Insurance, Allianz. The executives featured in this roundtable editorial held the above positions at the time of publication.

MattHeW PalMer, tcs: Cost management of the IT organisation has improved over the last 15 years due to major industry-wide investments in rationalisation activities, but the legacy environment is still a pressure point in terms of speed to market, and we’re seeing insurers think more dramatically about how they solve this simplification issue. The additional complication for insurers is that they are trying to simplify and transform their business while maintaining stable operational services. It is difficult to ‘change the tyre on the car while it’s still running’. However business and IT executives are doing their utmost to manage this complex situation. As well as IT simplification, business and IT executives are seriously thinking about process simplification. Insurers have dramatically improved services and processes via line of business improvement projects, but with constrained resources and budgets 98

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they have been unable to completely optimise some fundamental processes. Due to this situation some important customer journeys remain a barrier to customer experience and cost management objectives. Cloud is a potential enabler of IT optimisation and effectiveness objectives. However its suitability is dividing IT executives and as such, it is yet to gain acceptance as a mainstream technology solution amongst insurers. Some say, “We want to sample what cloud is about because we believe it can help with operational efficiency.” Therefore one area of interest is around using cloud services to provide development and testing environments in order to help with business change and configuration management commitments. Another area of interest in cloud services is around data management and business intelligence – where data cleansing, data processing and data enrichment is enhanced by cloud services. Due to this situation some important

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customer journeys remain a barrier to customer experience and cost management objectives. Rightfully so. The challenge for IT executives is how to manage costs and we believe cloud services will continue to offer value to insurers in meeting this objective. Regulators are looking at the insurance industry and saying it needs greater transparency regarding the risks the businesses are facing and the capital reserves it holds to offset these risks. Australian insurers recently challenged the local regulator and succeeded in achieving a less onerous approach to capital management, but the whole risk management area will remain a hot topic for the next few years. Data privacy is another key issue, especially with the proliferation of multiple channels including the emerging mobile and social media channels. Considering how we maintain data privacy whilst also connecting with customers over new channels like social media and mobile, it will continue to be an IT objective for the foreseeable future. Additionally, insurers are also noting they can enhance their brand by maximising their marketing intelligence, including intelligence from social networking environments. Technologies are available that can automate these tasks and we’re seeing people increasingly interested in using electronic listening tools to decipher inferences from positive and

negative market commentary. Data privacy remains a key concern for insurers operating in this arena. Predictive analytics will also be a differentiating capability for business teams for the next few operating periods. The whole product configuration process is under review in this geography as well as in other countries. How do you increase speed to market of your product and pricing changes? How do you achieve future looking product and pricing views, rather than the deterministic and historical views that we’ve worked with? Predictive analytics will be increasingly significant in product and pricing areas as well as other functional areas. The customer experience around integrated channels is the last point I will cover. How can we improve customer retention in terms of integrated channels that improves the customer experience? Australia has a good set of retention numbers but retention rates are under threat in other parts of the world. This will remain a critical battleground for insurers and people are talking about how multi-channel integration will help them achieve their customer experience objectives. Business and IT executives are also increasingly considering Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and closed book outsourcing.

andreW boldeMan, toWer: Scale is very important across these markets. With the proliferation of technologies and things that people can invest in, you need scale to invest in different channels simultaneously. We look at return on investment and value. We’re in a business where price is important, so being able to deliver quality service at an appropriate price is critical. steVe coles, allianZ: I have seen organisations that have outsourced or offshored and they’ve spent many years moving a clumsy process and it remains pretty much the same clumsy process with a lower cost. Some of these organisations could have dramatically improved their processes through things like Business Process Management (BPM) or other technologies. So it is ‘horses for courses’ and there are lots of variables to consider. MattHeW PalMer, tcs: It’s about making intelligent decisions. There are certain functions that you will want to keep in-house. There are important aspects of a value chain in terms of ‘getting it right’ and if you’ve got a clumsy process w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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you want to reengineer the process to get it right. Hence the increasing focus on business process optimisation by business and IT executive teams.

MurraY HoWe, suncorP: I come from a marketing background and I see two juxtaposing forces. From a customer perspective I see increasing complexity – the rise of social, online, media fragmentation – bringing increased cost to engage and acquire. The business however is looking for greater simplicity of operations and lowering cost. What does that mean for TCS, and how are other people dealing with it?

“From a customer perspective I see increasing complexity – the rise of social, online, media fragmentation – bringing increased cost to engage and acquire.” murray howe, suncorp

MattHeW PalMer, tcs: The ideal approach is to drive down the costs, not just from a cost arbitrage point of view, but also from a sustainable transformation of the business processes point of view. Within our project work for clients we always strive to improve the technology and also re-engineer and automate processes. It is desirable to achieve IT and business process optimisation together in order to reduce the pressure on costs and operational objectives. You mentioned new channels, new media, but you’ve also got to build in regulatory initiatives. You’ve got to drive the costs down whilst creatively thinking about new functionality and not blowing your budget. This is where Software-as-a-Service (Saas), will come into play because a service approach can help manage your costs of delivering new functionality. In the future we believe organisations will consider business and IT simplification using (SaaS) in an effective way that’s palatable to the risk profile of the organisation. JaMes inGHaM, Qbe: Many global players have seen regulatory risks across different environments. Do you find organisations in different countries approaching cloud computing with concern about regulatory environments and the effect based on where they’re located?

MattHeW PalMer, tcs: It’s a test-and-learn approach at the moment and if regulatory requirements are involved there is real nervousness. If there are opportunities where the data can be masked to protect data privacy within the guidelines set out by the regulator, then people are beginning to dip their toes in the water as far as cloud is concerned.

JaMes inGHaM, Qbe: Even before they’ve

approach first before they take critical business and IT operations into a cloud environment.

sanJeeV GuPta, WesFarMers General insurance: It’s more than just conservatism. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has regulations and concerns around customer data being overseas. Until APRA changes its mind, things aren’t going to move much.

neil WHiteinG, iaG: At IAG we’re assuming the regulations aren’t going to change any time soon. We’ll always lag what’s going on from a business process or IT perspective. We’re heading down the path of simplification, exposing the services. Within that there are additional customer data services around tokenisation so I don’t always need to send name, address, telephone number and so on. For us cloud is about workloads and where we send those workloads. We’re not outsourcing, in fact I know where my data centre is. Once people learn to manage and get comfortable with it, then cloud becomes more real. That’s why people go for a virtual private cloud, because they don’t know how to deal with the authentication/ authorisation issue and how to attest to APRA that customer data isn’t in the Philippines or wherever. What’s the difference between a virtual private cloud and a highly virtualised environment in my own data centre? Not a lot, from an economic model perspective. We believe we will have to tokenise; we believe we will have to scrub data. We’re starting to develop those capabilities rather than waiting for APRA to catch up.

sanJeeV GuPta, WesFarMers General insurance: Looking at everything that is available with the cloud arrangement at the moment, it’s more of a managed service than a ‘true cloud’.

neil WHiteinG, iaG: What do you mean by a ‘true cloud’?

sanJeeV GuPta, WesFarMers General insurance: It’s not a ‘pay by the drink’ service, you’ve still got to own the bar to buy a drink. Amazon has got it; and so does Microsoft, but that is more aimed at consumer type service and not corporate users. Corporate applications that I’m seeing are named cloud but are managed services.

seen the regulatory test cases?

MattHeW PalMer, tcs: People are testing it themselves. They will develop the environment

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steVe coles, allianZ: The cloud solution today doesn’t justify the hype. Sometimes I wish they would sell me the software and I’ll stick it in my

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data centre. However, I can see the market changing especially where there is a stronger reliance on centrally managed infrastructure and where the market is looking for more cost effective solutions to reduce risk. At the moment, it has the risk of being a technology that a user could manipulate. People could get a credit card out and get a whole bunch of exciting stuff. Then data management and IT control principles are suddenly out of the equation. It has the risk of enabling a ‘cowboy IT country’ at the moment, but I’m sure it will settle into something a lot more serious and valuable. Our IT governance is embedded in the organisation; people don’t go out and select an IT solution just because it’s accessible. However we have to get the IT plumbing right for any commercial opportunity we need to explore. We’re looking at Salesforce as a case study to see how we can empower the business to do some practical stuff and leverage the technology, but still have the appropriate controls around it. We’re not quite there yet.

JoHn MYler, allianZ: I agree. Insurers are a risk-based business and need to avoid importing operational risks. From an IT perspective, we are conservative around the adoption of new technologies. As a distribution owner I’m also faced with increasing diversity from my customer base and I need to leverage my existing processes multiple ways across multiple sites. It requires an agility to meet customer complexity head-on and respond appropriately.

MattHeW PalMer, tcs: John, in terms of managing down costs, what’s your viewpoint on how the industry will address this situation? JoHn MYler, allianZ: I look at it from a user perspective and what the technology will allow me to do. There is a truism: ‘The most customerfocused process you can design will often be the most efficient’. So start with the customer experience, design the internal process accordingly, and then deploy technology to support it end to end. Companies who start with what the potential cost savings technology can bring and then try to retrofit it into a business can end up with higher overall operating cost and a poor customer outcome.

steVe coles, allianZ: In 2005 we separated ‘running the business’ from ‘changing the business’. Part of my organisation just focuses on taking business costs down. That’s given me the opportunity to reinvest in a framework for keeping our IT expense ratio competitive. If I can make savings of $2 for every

$100 of insurance premium, then from a competitive perspective it means that we can grow more by offering a better price, a better profit or a mixture of the two.

eric reisenWitZ, MetliFe: Part of the issue is timing when the benefits of the newly implemented technology catch up with the cost savings that you’re trying to accomplish. One of the challenges we face when we implement new technology is catching up with our customers’ own systems, but there’s also part of the customer base that is not ready to move, so there is parallel running of old programs with the new online technologies. The savings you’re expecting to get from the new automation don’t always match up with your investment at exactly the same time. More importantly, customers don’t want to pay for it. Once they see the ‘new world’ they think that should be standard, and they assume your price includes that. Other industries have made these moves such as the airline industry, and now that everything can be done online, you actually pay more for a customer service agent or when you get a paper ticket. I don’t know if we’re ready to say, “You can still have the old way of doing it but it costs you more.” neil WHiteinG, iaG: Why don’t you think we are ready for it?

eric reisenWitZ, MetliFe: We’re ready for it; I’m not sure the customers are yet. They want and actually are using the technology. We’re going to get there. We’re talking about the challenges in trying to balance the cost of running parallel processes and dealing with an annual budget that assumes you have the cost benefits lined up.

“The most customerfocused process you can design will often be the most efficient.” John myler, allianz

steVe coles, allianZ: The real surprise for me was online claims. I was very cynical about online claims before we tried it, but we’ve had instances where 40 per cent of our incoming claim lodgements have been online. There’s lots of evidence that consumer behaviour is changing. eric reisenWitZ, MetliFe: It’s clearly moving, and that’s part of the discussion – how we move consumer behaviour? With life insurance, people don’t like the whole process of signing up because it’s making them think about things they don’t want to think about. Simplifying the process is great, they love that. At claim time I am amazed at how many people are willing to go online. From a death claim perspective, there are only a few things you need: proof that they were covered and proof that they have died. There’s really not a lot of additional investigation required. w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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Part of me says, “Why did it take us this long as an industry to move things along?” You still need to have fraud controls and privacy but there is now a comfort level. I don’t know whether it’s because of the nature of our product, which is not very tangible, or whether people are shocked when they push buttons, it works. The biggest ‘aha’ moment was when we started our online application process. We did some focus groups with people to see: can you do this; is this user-friendly; how do we do this? People entered their data and clicked on to the next screen. When they got to the end it said, “You’re approved; here’s the PDF of your certificate. Something will come to you in the mail.” Most of them did not believe that they had actually obtained the insurance; they wanted to know what was going to happen next. They were amazed that it was that simple. They are saying, “I’m comfortable with this process now and I didn’t think I could be.”

“At claim time I am amazed at how many people are willing to go online.” eric reisenwitz, metlife

andreW boldeMan, toWer: From a life perspective the market’s changed a lot. Going back 10 years people used to think ‘people are sold life insurance, they don’t buy it’. When we set up a call centre where people could ring in and apply for life insurance people said, “Well that’s not going to work.” Ten years later it has been very successful. People are picking up the phone and choosing to take out cover for themselves. Now on the web consumers shop around and check out prices but they still generally want to speak to someone. Telephone interaction is becoming increasingly important across all channels in the process of obtaining life insurance policies; 10 years ago people primarily had an adviser sitting down with them when they considered their life insurance. JaMes inGHaM, Qbe: Have you noticed much pushback from the business itself during this 10 year simplification, and are we eroding our competitive differential?

andreW boldeMan, toWer: To a degree but it is not insurmountable. People who have been in the sector 15 years are used to a particular way of doing things. Trying to encourage people to reconsider their processes is not without challenges, but people pick it up and then they get passionate. Often those who were the strongest in opposition become the biggest advocates. That’s a transformation we’ve seen over the last four to five years. MattHeW PalMer, tcs: In the UK the regulators are encouraging various levels of personal financial decision making in the life insurance sector: 102

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simplified advice; execution-only advice; more complicated advice. The two drivers are, first to improve people’s awareness about what they need, and second to make simple products available to them. The problem for insurers is how do you operate cost effectively in an execution-only channel where there are very thin margins? It’s very difficult to achieve this with existing operating models and being constantly under pressure to reduce costs.

steVe coles, allianZ: Allianz has assessed different types of models but we believe that we can provide a better expense ratio by leveraging the infrastructure that we’ve already got – that supports the traditional business. eric reisenWitZ, MetliFe: Until recently there were specific channels where you would get your insurance: through an IFA, somebody you knew, though your super, or maybe some retail relationship with banks and/or credit cards. They’re all still there but now within those channels are dozens of different ways of getting the insurance, whether it’s online or through telephone calls. The generation of people who are now doing all their transactions online don’t sit back and think about the financial institution they’re going to deal with. It’s about how to get it all online in the easiest way and how to process more quickly. Those are the types of things that we need to react to. We are there from a conceptual perspective; it’s again about transition from the traditionalists versus this new group of thinkers. steVe coles, allianZ: If we take the most efficient distribution model being internet direct, I can deliver that service more cost efficiently as a service provider by leveraging the capability and scale that I’ve got, rather than building a silo that would support just one part of the business. JoHn MYler, allianZ: We have numerous channels and teams using different systems to distribute products. By getting distribution onto the same platform and getting more consistent process, I’ll achieve 10 to 15 per cent operational expense saving. MattHeW PalMer, tcs: In Europe the ‘new world operating model’ is back on the agenda. Businesses are thinking about running free of their current constraints, driving out process inefficiencies and costs, and thinking what to do next to achieve this end-state.

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steVe coles, allianZ: We would be completely opposite to that approach – it’s key to the way we run the business but it all depends where you started from. Go back to the question about outsourcing and radical change. MattHeW PalMer, tcs: They are not taking that decision from purely an outsourcing point of view. This is about a ‘blue ocean’ strategy that frees them from the constraints of their current operating model. steVe coles, allianZ: I don’t see it as a constraint to innovative thinking or creativity. My view would be that the customer would be driving that. neil WHiteinG, iaG: It’s a clear separation in business strategy. One line is along the lines that Steve is taking; we’ve seen that in organisations like Santander.

neil WHiteinG, iaG: Locally Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has absolutely taken the approach that Steve’s taking. Others believe in a more federated model, where decisions about technology and the provision of services will be retained at the business unit level, and you’ll get flexibility or speed to market choices along those lines. I can’t say one’s right and one’s wrong, but the organisations that are going to be in deep trouble are the ones that sit in the middle. The ones that clearly put a foot in one or the other camp will leverage it and make it work. Trying to play in both is not a good thing.

eric reisenWitZ, MetliFe: That’s even more important with how fast technology is moving. If you try to play in both worlds and the new world starts to evolve into something – whether it’s cloud or something else – if you’re still playing in the other world, it’s going to be much more difficult. You won’t be able to evolve. andreW boldeMan, toWer: There are different issues across different channels of our business. Over the past few years in group life we have been building a new capability from a largely clean sheet, so our issue is building systems and capability in a way that’s scalable and sustainable into the future. At the same time we have other business channels that are more mature that might be supported by three or four systems. We don’t want IT resources maintaining multiple systems that largely do the same thing so in that space its more about simplification. What makes our IT job difficult is managing costs and achieving scale when there are different business customers trying to achieve different things.

neil WHiteinG, iaG: That’s an operational challenge. What we’re talking about is a strategic approach. Most people haven’t defined what their strategic approach is, so they deal with it as an operational challenge. It’s important that you have a clear strategic foundation, otherwise you can be caught between a fast growing business and a more mature business. You need to step back from that detail of operational pressure and review your corporate principles. It’s not black and white. If you have 10 decisions and three of them go against the strategic vision but meet operational requirements it might seem like a good balance. On the other hand, if you have a strategic direction and seven to eight out of 10 decisions are point-to-point, you have to decide if you are committed to the strategic vision, or whether you go point-topoint. Businesses that are caught in the middle will say one thing and they’ll do another. It’s okay to say. “We’re point-to-point and we’re going to manage it for flexibility.” But to say one thing strategically and do another thing operationally is very dangerous.

MattHeW PalMer tcs: That’s very interesting in terms of the channel strategy and the customer experience.

neil WHiteinG, iaG: The long-term implication. You’ll end up with something that is not what you wanted. I’m talking over five to eight years. In the short term you’ll meet your objectives because you made point-to-point decisions. It’s a front-loaded long-term journey to go down the strategic path. Look at how much money CBA is pouring into it. It’s not cheap or easy. It takes executive commitment to do that. The operational choices that they’re making are completely aligned with the strategic choices. We’ve got a more federated market and we’re making choices against federated business decisions and our business is going very well. It isn’t right or wrong, it’s about alignment of operational decision-making with your strategic framework.

“It’s important that you have a clear strategic foundation, otherwise you can be caught between a fast growing business and a more mature business.” neil whiteing, iag

eric reisenWitZ, MetliFe: In my 30 years in insurance we’ve always had technology partners. Technology is the enabler of business strategy. With all the change over that 30 year period, that is still the basic core of how to do things. You need your business strategy, and what we do in IT is the enabler to that. There have been times where it’s felt like IT was driving the business but that’s an excuse businesses use when they’re not doing well. When you have the alignment set up then you are moving in the right direction. w ho ’ s w ho o f fs i

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neil WHiteinG, iaG: The variety of business models that technology can now enable is where the complexity comes in. Technologies will emerge that will deal with security and data protection in the cloud, and as long as you understand how to make them work you’ll be okay if that’s your strategy. Thirty years ago you really only had one option – centralisation. You didn’t have distributed; you didn’t have cloud; you didn’t have SAPs. Now with the proliferation of new technologies, the challenge for technologists is education. I’m a teacher; my job is to educate my business partners about the choices they have in a way that they understand so we can maintain our alignment.

“If it is a very federated business like Wesfarmers General Insurance, then having decision making closer to the customer – where actual value is added – makes more sense.” sanJeev gupta, wesfarmers general insurance

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anantH basaVaraJu, tcs: IT trailing the business is a very interesting point. What we observed in the Australian market is continued focus moving towards bringing agility, scalability and flexibility in their business. We are continuously seeing the trends where businesses want to showcase their services to their customer a different way and they are asking how IT could bring the differentiation. Business is driving this culture and more importantly both business and IT are working in tandem to make this journey a great success to meet their end customer’s objectives. One of the initiatives happening in the insurance industry now is consolidation and rationalisation of the systems and it is underpinned by the rationalisation of some of the products in the banking sector a few years back and now that’s the trend in the Australian insurance market. MattHeW PalMer, tcs: The agility point is really important. Neil, how are you encouraging agility around product speed to market via your federated model? neil WHiteinG, iaG: In a federated model it’s more obvious than in a centralised model. Traditional logic would say that with a federated model via distributed decision-making closer to the customer. You get to choose how to position things. Sales reps are pretty good at that and it’s a useful mechanism for informing us. We have a brand new business product to market; a totally online experience, very different to anything we have today. It’s not just a skin on top of direct book business. It’s a totally new book of business and it was eight months from board approval to go-live. That’s a pretty quick turnaround for our industry. We leveraged some of our infrastructure components, but for the application layer and things like telephony and click-to-chat, we sourced those

externally. If we had tried to do it internally we would have got there, but it probably would have taken longer and we would have had a few hiccups. So we sourced the services and then integrated them together. So there is a demonstrated proof point. That’s where the federated model came into play. A centralised model doesn’t prevent you from doing this, but you probably want to internalise some of those capabilities more so that you can offer them out to other customers.

JoHn MYler, allianZ: Some of the investments that I’m making in the business would not stack up without the capability to leverage other channels. Yes, I want to spend $2 here to make $2 back here, but it’s also got to make $2 there, there, and there.

neil WHiteinG, iaG: That’s a thought process and strategy; there has to be a belief underpinning it. In a business that does not have clarity on strategy and a proven track record of executing against it, history proves that they can’t deliver. It is about the alignment of strategy and IT and business and the operational decision making that goes with that.

steVe coles, allianZ: That is ‘business as usual’ you wouldn’t have it any other way. There’s going to be a tipping point around product flexibility. We’re not facing it yet, but I’m sure we’ll face it down the line, which will be an interesting challenge. There is an opportunity to take a step back from your products and look at what we call good and bad complexity. We try to embed good complexity within products where we can and remove the bad complexity. sanJeeV GuPta, WesFarMers General insurance: Depends on the operating model, if your business has an integrated operating model, then some centralisation makes sense. But if it’s a very federated business, like Wesfarmers General Insurance, then having decision making closer to the customer – where actual value is added – makes more sense.

neil WHiteinG, iaG: Yes, but take CBA for example, they offer a wide range of products from wealth management to core banking, mortgage, retail brokerage and insurance. Those are all fairly autonomous yet they still manage to drive some consistency in the back end. That’s where leadership comes in. All the other banks would like to say that they’re going to execute against those things but most of them are having problems. The difference

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in CBA is you’ve got Ralph Norris who has a very passionate belief, comes from the IT side, understands what it’s all about and is taking a much firmer hand on the wheel to get the right business behaviour.

efficiency – those are the things that we had better be really good at. It doesn’t matter what the problem is, we must adapt, adjust and deliver.

for the business strategy need to drive this. You could have all the technology capabilities in the world.

MattHeW PalMer, tcs: John, in terms of what Paul’s just said how agile do you think your organisation will be in six or nine months time? Would it be different from where you are today?

neil WHiteinG, iaG: Technology cannot drive it.

JoHn MYler, allianZ: No. I’m less interested in

eric reisenWitZ, MetliFe: The people responsible

eric reisenWitZ, MetliFe: No. They need to stay on the narrow focus of execution, and always have people around them to reinforce the strategy. Without that it’s not going to be successful.

Paul detHeridGe, suncorP: We found two regimes, one model stated to be consolidation but in fact a federated business with huge amounts of power; and a new world model with a very clear decision-making process for consolidating single platforms to build business value. The only way to be successful is if you have the leadership right from the top of the organisation. Our claims platform was a war zone between lines of business and we dealt with that with an executive table decision to state our direction. The conversation around our executive table has been under Jeff Smith for three years – how do we create a culture of productivity, efficiency, and innovation? We take input from the conversations that come to our table, but that’s not how we actually take our technology business forward. We try to apply the same principles to everything we do, either by consolidating legacy technologies or delivering new technologies to the front end. We’ve taken a culturally driven transformation approach to drive efficiency into the organisation and as a consequence we’ve got high credibility. In the new world of customers, Gen–Y kids may see an innovation that they don’t see in another product, whether it’s insurance or banking or phone or whatever, and they go ‘why not?’ Gen–Ys don’t need to do due diligence, they’ve got 500 million heads on the planet who they communicate with on a daily basis and they just ask the question. That’s going to transform the way we respond to the market, because we have to be agile and there’s no hiding behind advertising campaigns and working ‘Jedi mind tricks’ on the general population. It’s all out there; it’s all in social media. The integrity of your product and your company are constantly under challenge as a consequence. Agility, productivity,

disruptive innovation and more around sustainable improvement for our customers. What we’ve done in Allianz is very much about that culture of improvement and reflects the saying, “You overestimate what you can achieve in the short term but often underestimate what you can achieve in the long term.” Conservatism in the industry is not going to change if you’ve got insurance companies being led by experienced insurance leaders who understand the risk profile inherent in their products. Whilst significant operational and technology innovations are often considered sexy or beneficial, it is having a proven sustainable improvement culture that leads to achieving long term success.

MattHeW PalMer, tcs: Scale is an important cost management strategy for organisations who want to invest in the transformation of their business. The industry maintains a vigilant focus on achieving scale benefits. IT executives are clearly keen to support their business colleagues by creating flexible business models and optimising existing business models in order to provide customer value. There is a general consensus that the industry continues to strive for less complexity. However competitive tendencies are potentially increasing the complexity of insurers’ operating models. This will be a key challenge for business and IT executives in coming months. Maintaining and improving the business and IT relationship remains a critical success factor if the industry is to continue to transform IT services. Evidence exists that these relationship are in poor health. This has led to process improvements across the business and IT value chain. For example online insurance purchases and claims process improvements. There remains keen interest in cloud services but exploration of its value is underway in most organisations. Insurance businesses do not like to introduce new risks. Goverance models will evolve to embrace cloud services based on the ‘test and learn’ activities that insurers have initiated to explore the value of cloud services.

“Success is depending on designing customer centric processes and using technology as an enabler.” matthew palmer, tcs

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The Who’s Who of Financial Services 2011/2012 Directory Australia’s top product, service and solution providers Agile/Lean Software Development

107

Enterprise Architecture

123

Enterprise Information Management

124

Enterprise Release Management

124

Banking 109

Financial Application Platform

125

Business Intelligence

109–111

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

125

Business Process Management

111–113

Information Management

126

Analytics 107–108 Back Office

108

Cloud 113–114

Insurance Applications

126–127

Consulting & Systems Integration

115

Insurance Software

128

Contact Centres

116

IT Systems Management

129

Convergence 117

Managed Services

Core Systems

Multi-channel Communications

117–118

129–130 131

Customer Communications

119

Outsourcing 131–134

Customer Experience

120

Recruitment 134–135

Customer Relationship Management

120–121

Risk Compliance

135 136

Data Loss Prevention

121

Risk and Payments

Data Services

122

Security 136–139

Document Management Systems

122

Unified Communications

Enterprise Applications

123

106

w h o ’ s w h o o f fs i

139–140

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

Agile/leAn softwAre Development

AnAlytics

thoughtworks

iBm Australia pty ltd

ThoughtWorks is a global IT consultancy providing delivery, integration and consulting services, both onshore and offshore. Based on a track record of consistent real-world success, we are leaders in the evolution and adoption of agile and lean methods within the enterprise. ThoughtWorks takes on high risk, business critical projects and creates high quality, innovative software assets. ThoughtWorks thrives on projects which present a high degree of complexity from factors like integration with legacy applications, diverse groups of stakeholders, demanding time scales or strict performance requirements. We are at the leading edge of the continuous design/continuous delivery movement, aiming for tight feedback loops and getting assets into production as rapidly as possible. We also help clients to tailor and adopt agile and lean practices in their own IT organisations, driving to eliminate waste and improve speed to market.

Today, money has been reduced to zeros and ones. It’s intangible and invisible. It’s information. Thankfully, intelligence is being infused into the way the world works, including our financial systems. Unprecedented computing power and advanced analytics can turn oceans of ones and zeros into insights, in real time, which means we can have safer, more transparent and intelligent financial systems for a smarter planet. IBM is committed to the financial services industry and building a smarter planet. • Over 8,000 practitioners are fully dedicated to the financial services industry across the globe • IBM client engagements include eight of the top 10 banks in the world, eight of the top 10 insurers in the world, and 13 of the top 15 financial markets firms in the world (as ranked by the Fortune Global 500) • IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBV) has 10 researchers/analysts to create thought leadership for banking, insurance and financial markets clients • A wide range of services specifically developed for the finance industry from information technology hardware, software and services; business consulting services; business transformation outsourcing; and IT financing

we can solve your toughest technology challenges • Consulting: Our advice is pragmatic and grounded in delivery expertise • Global delivery: Designing and building enterprise-scale systems onshore and offshore, with quality, on time and on budget • Agile tools: Global leader in Agile Application Lifecycle Management • Market leader: With over 1,800 staff in 22 global offices, ThoughtWorks is the market leader in agile and lean methods, adding long-term value and growth to our clients. Through our talented, passionate and innovative people we deliver leading edge products and systems that give our clients in the financial services sector competitive advantage in the market.

thoughtworks phone: 1300 723 823 email: info_au@ThoughtWorks.com website: www.thoughtworks.com

At a glance It is the diversity and breadth of our portfolio that uniquely separates IBM from other companies in the IT industry including: • Finance strategy • Performance management and analytics • Finance enterprise applications • Finance operations improvement • Integrated risk management

iBm 601 pacific highway st leonards nsw 2065 phone: 13 24 26 email: ibmfss@au1.ibm.com twitter: twitter.com/IBMFinanceAU website: www.ibm.com/financialservices/au/ W ho ’ S W ho o F FSi

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AnAlytics

BAck office

sAs

Broadridge financial solutions

solving complex business problems

Broadridge Financial Solutions is a leading global provider of technology-based outsourcing solutions to the financial services industry. Our systems and services include capital markets transaction processing solutions and investor communication solutions. In 2010 Broadridge acquired City Networks Ltd, a leading provider of reconciliation, trade confirmation matching and multi-asset process automation and operational risk management solutions.

With reduced revenue growth and business margins and growing regulatory obligations, many financial services organisations are facing an increasingly challenging operating environment. At SAS, we provide our customers with the ability to leverage analytics to become more competitive and make business decisions with confidence.

industry leader in business analytics For more than 30 years, SAS has been at the forefront of business analytics and is recognised for the performance of its solutions. This same focus is now evident in our new range of high-performance computing solutions that meet the challenges of increased computational speed with the capacity to process increasing volumes of enterprise data.

our expertise in financial services With more than 43 per cent of SAS’ annual revenues generated from serving more than 3,100 financial institutions globally, we understand the key business issues and problems of the financial services sector. Our customers address complex business problems and demonstrate significant return on investment using SAS® Business Analytics, including solutions for risk management and fraud, customer intelligence, performance management and enterprise business analytics.

innovation SAS is recognised for its innovation and ongoing investment in research and development. If you are seeking to become more competitive, talk to SAS, the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market.

solutions • Gloss: leading international capital markets processing solution, from trade capture to settlement • SUMMIT: front to back office solution for firms operating in the Australian equities market • PROactive Reconciliation: enterprise reconciliation solution for any type of financial instrument across all internal systems and external agents • PROactive Matching: confirmation matching solution that automates the processing of trade confirmations • PROactive Commission & Fee Management: solution to manage brokerage fees and commissions, improve the terms of trading relationships and ensure accurate internal allocation • SWIFT Service Bureau: international outsourcing service for SWIFT messaging • Investor communication solutions: comprehensive outsource offering for all participants in the global proxy process, facilitating electronic communication and proxy voting among custody banks, brokerage firms, issuers and their worldwide shareholders • Outsourcing services: ASP, BPO and operations outsourcing

sAs 300 Burns Bay road lane cove nsw 2066

Broadridge financial solutions suite 2, level 13 50 margaret street sydney nsw 2000

phone: +61 2 9428 0628 email: info@oz.sas.com contact: Paul Franks, General Manager, Financial Services website: www.sas.com/australia

phone: +61 2 9034 1700 email: info@broadridge.com contact: Fraser Moodie, John Ryan website: www.broadridge.com

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w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

BAnking

Business intelligence

polaris software

iBm Australia pty ltd

Founded in 1993, Polaris Software (POLS.BO) is a leading financial technology company with a comprehensive portfolio of products, smart legacy modernisation services and consulting. It offers state-of-the-art solutions for core banking, corporate banking, wealth and asset management and insurance, and is the chosen partner for: • Nine of the top 10 global banks • Seven of the top 10 global insurance companies Relationship, expertise, technology, intellectual property and global reach are the routes that enable Polaris to come closer to its customers worldwide. The experience of relationships across developed markets like US and Europe and emerging markets like Vietnam and Chile is a significant differentiator for Polaris, making it the foremost domain expert in delivering the right financial technology solutions. • Polaris has 29 offices in 20 countries with 10,000 solution architects, domain consultants and techno bankers The company owns the largest set of intellectual properties in the form of a comprehensive product suite, Intellect™ Global Universal Banking (GUB). • A pure play service-oriented architecture (SOA) based application suite comprising nine key platforms and over 95 products • Delivers mission critical solutions Polaris’ global sourcing is driven by business outcomes rather than pure cost arbitrage-led outsourcing. The company services global customers from its Centers of Excellence called ‘Entity’. Polaris’ strategic intent is directed towards delivering future-proof technology.

polaris software polaris house 244 Anna salai, chennai – 600 006 india phone: +91 44 3987 4000 +61 3 9674 0419 (VIC) +61 2 9267 1955 (NSW) fax: +91 44 2743 5166 website: www.polarisFT.com

iBm 601 pacific highway st leonards nsw 2065 phone: 13 24 26 email: ibmfss@au1.ibm.com twitter: www.twitter.com/IBMFinanceAU website: www.ibm.com/financialservices/au W ho ’ S W ho o F FS i

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Business intelligence

microstrategy

Qliktech

MicroStrategy is a global leader in business intelligence (BI) technology. MicroStrategy software enables organisations to report on, analyse, and monitor the data stored across their enterprise to reveal trends and insights to make better business decisions. With actionable information, organisations can better serve customers, improve operational efficiencies, identify new sales opportunities, and reduce costs. MicroStrategy’s business intelligence software is used by thousands of companies worldwide. Companies choose MicroStrategy for its ease-of-use, sophisticated analytics, and superior data and user scalability. Designed to support the most demanding business intelligence applications, MicroStrategy is ideal for enterprise-wide BI standardisation. MicroStrategy’s business intelligence platform delivers actionable information to business users via email, web, and mobile devices, including iPhone, iPad, and BlackBerry. Many people prefer to consume business intelligence on their mobile devices rather than on their desktop computers, since mobile devices are more portable, always on, and always connected. MicroStrategy’s architecture is engineered to provide the speed and scalability to support the escalating demands of mobile BI applications. MicroStrategy’s Dynamic Enterprise Dashboards combine advanced data visualisation and animation with MicroStrategy’s industrialstrength business intelligence platform to deliver highly intuitive information dashboards that yield greater business insight than traditional graphs and grids. Business users can intuitively flip through many perspectives of corporate performance, allowing them to quickly and easily identify problems and diagnose root causes. MicroStrategy Australia has offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane.

QlikTech was founded on the belief that business intelligence (BI) should be about business users. Traditional BI solutions have become bloated, complex software stacks, leaving users confused and frustrated. For 18 years QlikTech has focused on simplifying decision making for business users across organisations. We pioneered new approaches to accessing, managing and interacting with data. Our QlikView Business Discovery platform is recognised as a groundbreaking solution. Combined with a relentless focus on customer success and a vibrant, passionate user community, it’s no wonder more than 18,000 companies and 570,000 users in over 100 countries use QlikView, with an industry-leading 96 per cent satisfaction rate.

The QlikView Business Discovery platform bridges the gap between traditional business intelligence (BI) solutions and standalone office productivity applications. It enables intuitive user-driven analysis that can be implemented in days or weeks rather than months, years, or not at all. The in-memory associative search technology QlikTech pioneered allows users to explore information freely rather than being confined to a predefined path of questions. QlikView Business Discovery works with existing BI applications and adds new capabilities: insight for everyone, zero-wait analysis, mobility, an app–like model, remixability and reassembly, and a social and collaborative experience.

microstrategy level 2, 448 st kilda road melbourne vic level 8, 54 miller street north sydney nsw

Qliktech level 40, 100 miller street north sydney nsw 2060

phone: +61 3 9865 9400 (Melbourne) phone: +61 2 9333 6400 (Sydney) email: info-anz@microstrategy.com website: www.microstrategy.com.au

phone: +61 2 9657 1350 email: infoanz@qlikview.com contact: Rebecca Lawless, Marketing Manager website: www.qlikview.com

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we deliver software that lets you discover insights – from the bottom up

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

Business intelligence

Business process mAnAgement

technologyone

pega

The financial services industry is a dynamic and challenging marketplace. Scrutiny from stakeholders including governments, investors, industry groups and consumers demands the industry act with the highest integrity and operate with transparency and accountability. To manage the challenges and needs of this complex sector, a software solution must address the everyday issues of using information from disparate systems for informed decision making, organisation-wide financial management, forecasting, cost transparency and management, project cost tracking, branch operations, real-time reporting and regulatory compliance. It also needs to facilitate people management and staff retention. TechnologyOne, an Australian owned and operated company, has been working with the financial services sector for more than 20 years and serves a variety of customers across this important industry. Our solutions provide for a range of sectors within the financial services industry including: • Banks, credit unions and building societies • Insurance providers • Superannuation • Wealth management • Investment services The fully integrated TechnologyOne Financials solution provides financial services organisations with the ability to easily report on and manage core financial and operational information, as well as meet the regulatory reporting requirements of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The TechnologyOne enterprise suite offers one solution with one interface and one database, designed to drive innovation, improve operational efficiencies and introduce measurable process improvement.

Pega business process management and customer relationship management solutions help organisations enhance customer loyalty, generate new business, and improve productivity. Our patented technology enables organisations to realise rapid and significant business returns by directly capturing business objectives into fully automated processes and eliminating manual programming. Pega solutions enable clients to quickly adapt to changing business conditions in order to outperform the competition.

technologyone level 11, technologyone hQ 540 wickham street fortitude valley QlD 4006 phone: +61 7 3167 7300 email: solutions@TechnologyOneCorp.com contact: Jenny Johnson, Financial Services Solutions Manager website: www.TechnologyOneCorp.com

turn business obstacles into business advantages Pega delivers an unprecedented level of flexibility and puts change into the hands of business owners. With Pega solutions on the cloud and on-premise, you gain the agile process intelligence you need to compete more effectively, drive productivity across every corner of the business, reduce risk and ensure compliance. Solution areas include: • New business: Gain the competitive edge with agile processes for customer acquisition and on-boarding that increase conversion rates, reduce costs and shorten time-to-market for new products and services • Customer relationship management: Maximise profitability by successfully balancing customer needs with business objectives across all channels and lines of business • Service delivery: Substantially reduce costs with automated front to back office processes and consistent operations across the enterprise. • Risk, fraud and compliance: Successfully increase compliance, mitigate risk and reduce fraud with comprehensive audit trails and reporting

pega level 6, 19-31 pitt street sydney nsw 2000 Australia phone: +61 2 9251 0566 email: apacmarketing@pega.com website: www.pega.com W ho ’ S W ho o F FS i

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Business process mAnAgement

progress software

software Ag

Progress Software (Progress) is a global software company that provides financial institutions with the ability to respond to changing conditions and business events as they occur. Progress enables financial services firms to achieve a higher level of business performance. It provides the ability to respond to changing conditions and business events as they occur, enabling business leaders to capitalise on commercial opportunities, drive greater efficiencies in their organisations, and reduce risk. Progress empowers you and other decision makers to monitor, control and improve your businesses in real time. • Case management: Get comprehensive customer-centric case management that leverages business process management to optimise customer-centric processes and facilitate timely interactions • Client on-boarding: Client on-boarding doesn’t have to be slow and painful. Now is the time to transform your client on-boarding into an efficient and reliable process • Payments: Get increased visibility into payments, and a ‘sense and respond’ infrastructure that existing and new processes can tap into, so you can identify payment exceptions or abnormal loan approval queue length/times • Fraud prevention: Leverage the power of complex event processing to spot potential fraud patterns in real-time so you can act immediately. Progress enterprise solutions seamlessly converge transaction management, event processing and workflow capabilities into one unified platform. The Progress suite integrates easily and flexibly into your existing IT environment without major modifications.

Software AG is the global leader in business process excellence. We offer our customers end-to-end business process management (BPM) solutions delivering low total cost of ownership and high ease of use. Our industry-leading brands, ARIS, webMethods, Adabas, Natural, Centrasite and IDS Scheer Consulting, represent a unique portfolio encompassing process strategy; design; integration and control; service oriented architecture-based integration and data management; process driven SAP implementation; and strategic process consulting and services. Software AG has more than 6,000 employees serving 10,000 customers across 70 countries. Our customers include some of the world’s leading financial services organisations.

progress software level 2, 194 miller street north sydney nsw 2060 phone: +61 2 9919 7100 email: au-marketing@progress.com contact: Derek Brand, Managing Director, Australia & New Zealand website: www.progress.com 112

Who ’S Wh o oF FS i

transform your processes – and your business – with Bpm Improved efficiency, customer service, compliance, cross-selling/upselling, straight-through processing and reduced costs are common goals for financial services organisations. But the road to get there varies greatly. Why invest in partial solutions when Software AG can take you the entire distance – faster? Our end-to-end BPM solutions – combining software, methodology and expertise – help you better adapt to changing business requirements and become more competitive by: • Ensuring consistent, business-driven processes that reduce costs • Increasing process performance, transparency and agility – within and beyond corporate boundaries • Collaborating across stakeholders to build the best processes • Analysing and optimising processes throughout their lifecycle, from strategy definition to monitoring process execution • Cost efficiently building on existing IT investments to improve processes and performance

software Ag Australia pty ltd l4, 183 Blues point road mcmahons point nsw 2060 phone: 1 800 064 970 email: marketing-au@softwareag.com website: www.softwareag.com

software Ag (singapore) ltd 8 temasek Boulevard #24-01 suntec tower three singapore 038988 phone: +65 6333 4556 email: enquiry.asia@softwareag.com

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

Business process mAnAgement

clouD

sword ciboodle

compuware

Sword Ciboodle provides an award-winning, modular, multi-channel customer engagement platform designed for the 21st century organisation, specifically to meet the needs of the 21st century customer. The Customer Engagement Continuum represents how we think about your customers and is organised in such a way to accelerate your ability to deliver consistent customer service. This leads to exceptional customer experience because it’s what your customers deserve and it’s the right thing to do. Organised into product modules so as to accelerate your ability to deliver consistent service no matter which channel is chosen by your customer, the Customer Engagement Continuum categorises our software into three service bundles: be served; be solo; be social. This approach means you can not only meet your customer’s high expectations, but exceed them. Be Served a.k.a Ciboodle One. Ciboodle Flow assists your employees with their ability to engage with your customers and standardise the service process. Be Solo a.k.a Ciboodle Live focuses on the self-service needs of your customers through an intuitive web and mobile service integrated with your core systems. Be Social a.k.a Ciboodle Crowd recognises that customers expect to be able to engage with you and your employees through social media and community-based interactions. The customer experience fabric for many local and global brands – including Queensland Police Service, Australian Unity, Crazy Johns, Telecom NZ, Smart Service Queensland, Sears, Bally Total Fitness, and Vistaprint – all leverage our platform to construct a genuinely social and customer centric business. CIO Magazine names Sword Ciboodle as a top 10 Asia Pacific ‘Rising Star’ on the MIS Strategic 100 list for 2011.

Compuware’s cloud performance management solution combines the company’s core technology competencies (enterprise application performance monitoring and web performance monitoring) to provide the first solution capable of managing performance and availability across the entire cloud service delivery chain. By combining our core technology, Compuware provides a unique, end-to-end view of the entire delivery chain from within a single unified dashboard. With end-to-end visibility across the application delivery chain, as illustrated below, IT administrators can use one ‘pane of glass’ to see performance bottlenecks wherever they arise. Compuware’s Cloud Computing strategy provides businesses with a number of key benefits: • Many service levels, one management solution • Applications without borders • Investment protection • Fast implementation, low up-front costs Compuware’s Cloud Performance Management solution provides an innovative approach to the application performance and availability challenges inherent in cloud computing. It offers the three key elements essential to meet these challenges: • Visibility across the entire delivery chain • Deep-dive troubleshooting for isolation • Resolution and unified dashboards for a single source of truth relevant to different stakeholders Using Compuware’s solution, customers are now able to move ahead with evaluating all aspects of cloud computing without being faced with unacceptable trade-offs on service levels and security. No other vendor is able to offer the same features in a single, integrated solution.

sword ciboodle phone: +61 2 9264 9566 +61 2 9275 8303 (direct) +61 (0) 414 465 856 contact: Paul Rainey, Account Director Australia and New Zealand website:: www.sword-ciboodle.com

compuware Asia-pacific locked Bag 2092 macquarie park nsw 1670 phone: +61 2 8875 5000 email: marketing.ap@compuware.com contact: Steve Jobson, VP ANZ & Japan website: www.compuware.com.au W ho ’ S W ho o F FSi

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clouD

fujitsu

iBm Australia pty ltd

The financial services industry in Australia and New Zealand comprises more than 30 per cent of total private sector activity, and underpins the economic growth of the broader community. Thankfully the shocks which have been created by the global financial crisis are abating and in our local markets we have a vibrant core comprising a number of large and well established players as well as some new and innovative entrants. Today there is significant opportunity to step out from the pack and differentiate in terms of customer experience and value. Whether you provide core retail banking services, wealth management or insurance offerings, or niche services like investment banking, there are significant opportunities to create additional shareholder value by providing the right services, delivered in the right way to the right customers. We call this our ‘customer-centric’ approach to financial services and this underpins everything Fujitsu does in the sector. Fujitsu provides a comprehensive suite of services and solutions, built around customer centricity, from superior customer insight through segmentation, to channel management, sales force effectiveness solutions, and into core business systems and processes. We also provide supporting applications and infrastructure services including secure desktop solutions, data centre processing and a range of products and services to enable you to create and deliver more agile services and products to your customers. We also believe that environmental sustainability is an essential pre-requisite for success and our solutions are of the highest environmental calibre.

Today, money has been reduced to zeros and ones. It’s intangible and invisible. It’s information. Thankfully, intelligence is being infused into the way the world works, including our financial systems. Unprecedented computing power and advanced analytics can turn oceans of ones and zeros into insights, in real time, which means we can have a safer, more transparent and intelligent financial systems for a smarter planet. IBM is committed to the financial services industry and building a smarter planet. • Over 8,000 practitioners are fully dedicated to the financial services industry across the globe • IBM client engagements include eight of the top 10 banks in the world, eight of the top 10 insurers in the world, and 13 of the top 15 financial markets firms in the world (as ranked by the Fortune Global 500) • IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBV) has 10 researchers/analysts to create thought leadership for banking, insurance and financial markets clients • A wide range of services specifically developed for the finance industry from information technology hardware, software and services; business consulting services; business transformation outsourcing; and IT financing

fujitsu contact Details: www.fujitsu.com/au/contact/ website: www.fujitsu.com/au/solutions/industry-solutions/financial/ index.html

iBm 601 pacific highway st leonards nsw 2065 phone: 13 24 26 email: ibmfss@au1.ibm.com twitter: www.twitter.com/IBMFinanceAU website: www.ibm.com/financialservices/au

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w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

consulting & systems integrAtion

infosys Australia & new Zealand

tata consultancy services

Organisations are challenged by highly informed and demanding customers, blurring business boundaries, new revenue channels, and changing cost structures. To succeed, you must ensure that your IT systems provide tangible results quickly, enable real-time decision making and maintain alignment to your business strategy. Infosys’ consulting and systems integration services adopt a pragmatic approach to help you address critical business needs. A vendoragnostic methodology ensures that all dependencies are managed to meet your program objectives. Our team of business consultants, change management specialists, senior business architects, and programme directors are available to assist you with:

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) offers an incredibly broad scope of expertise across financial services, matched to a full-service mix of offerings across IT services, business solutions, and outsourcing. TCS supports firms with applications maintenance and operational support, including mission critical applications such as online banking, ATMs and payments networks, as well as operational solutions in capital markets, cards, risk management and compliance. The TCS BaNCS software suite encompasses an array of pre-configured, customisable banking, capital markets and insurance products, live across more than 250 customer sites across 80 countries. TCS also has deep expertise in non-domain-specific applications, including enterprise resource planning, client relationship management, human resources, payroll, business intelligence and analytics. Drawing upon our global delivery capabilities, we deliver business process outsourcing services including collections and mortgage operations services and reconciliations. TCS also provides depth of expertise in the IT back office. Whether it’s creating a new data centre, planning infrastructure transformation, or implementing an IT risk management framework, our senior-level consultants enable high profile, mission critical projects to succeed. TCS is particularly strong in testing services, including performance testing, functional testing, automated testing, test management and regression testing. TCS is proud to partner with over 15 financial institutions in Australia and New Zealand, including the local operations of global investment banks and three of the top four domestic banks.

information and technology strategies • IT diagnostic and assessment • IT cost reduction • IT transformation (applications, infrastructure, solution delivery) • Portfolio analysis merger integration

product innovation • Co-creation and innovation networks • Concept labs • Product effectiveness analysis • PLM-enabled transformation

next generation commerce • Multi-channel customer experience analysis • Customer data collection and use • Sales and marketing process redesign

infosys Australia & new Zealand other offices in Auckland, Brisbane, christchurch, sydney, perth, Wellington phone: +61 3 9860 2000 (Melbourne) or +61 2 8912 1500 (Sydney) email: ausinfo@infosys.com contact: Robert Liong, Managing Partner, Consulting & Systems Integration, Asia Pacific website: www.infosys.com

tata consultancy services l3, 76 Berry street north sydney nsw 2060 Australia offices also in Auckland, Wellington, redfern and Melbourne phone: +61(0) 402 957 321 email: alex.goldrick@tcs.com contact: Alex Goldrick, Marketing and Communications Manager website: www.tcs.com W ho ’ S W ho o F FS i

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contAct centres

interactive intelligence

sword ciboodle

Contact centre software is what other vendors offer. With the unified IP business communications offering from Interactive Intelligence your business gets complete solutions. A complete contact centre platform for multichannel interactions, offered with a choice of deployment models – as a cloud-based service, on-premise or a managed service – we do it all. Interactive Intelligence is a global provider of unified business communications software solutions for government, health, education, finance and insurance. The solutions we offer include: • Contact centre automation • Enterprise IP telephony • Unified communications • Business process automation • Accounts receivable and contact management • Enterprise content management

At a glance • (NASDAQ: ININ): Founded in 1994, headquartered in Indiana, USA • 4,000 customers in over 90 countries; 300 partners in 50 countries worldwide • 19 offices worldwide (North America, Latin America, EMEA, APAC, A/NZ) • 800 employees worldwide • Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Contact Centre Infrastructure – Worldwide (2008, 2009, 2010) • Among Software Magazine’s 2010 Top 500 Global Software/Services Suppliers, Forbes Magazine 2010 Further information on Interactive Intelligence visit: www.inin.com. For more on our hosted services – Communications as a Service, visit www.caas.com

interactive intelligence level 9, 275 Alfred street north sydney nsw 2060 Australia phone: +61 2 8918 4800 email: info_aunz@inin.com contact: Sales website: www.inin.com/au-nz 116

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sword ciboodle phone: +61 2 9264 9566 +61 2 9275 8303 (direct) +61 (0) 414 465 856 contact: Paul Rainey, Account Director Australia and New Zealand website:: www.sword-ciboodle.com

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

convergence

core systems

gen-i

csc Australia

Are you looking for a cost effective, flexible and simple approach to your ICT needs? Do you need greater alignment between your business drivers and your ICT outcomes? Gen-i is the multinational ‘ICT heart’ of the Telecom NZ Group of companies, which together have revenues of more than $5.5 billion and employ 8,600 people. Gen-i is uniquely positioned to deliver Trans-Tasman, end-to-end managed services solutions combining IT & Telecommunications through 17 award-winning Centres of Excellence. Our ICT solutions are supported by more than 3,000 people who are proud to be experts at what they do, industry partners who are truly world class, and resources that set benchmarks for the rest of the industry in terms of breadth, functionality and scale. We also have a decade of specialisation in the Australian Financial and Services Industry with regional clients including, ANZ, Aon, Westpac, IAG, CBA, ASB Bank, KiwiBank and BNZ. We drive IT & Telecommunications out of the confines of IT departments into the business, across the boardroom and create satisfying customer experiences. We do this through our Centres of Excellence in Unified Communications and Collaboration, Information Management, Applications Delivery and Virtualisation, and ultimately deliver Managed ICT. Gen-i’s customer-focused approach combined with the unique Gen-i 9 engagement methodology ensures that our customers, and their customers, are at the core of all ICT programs.

hogan Banking systems

gen-i sydney, melbourne, Brisbane, Auckland, wellington, christchurch

csc Australia 26 talavera road macquarie park nsw 2113

phone: 1800 803 755 website: www.gen-i.com.au

CSC’s Hogan Banking Systems have been putting innovation to work for more than 50 of the world’s leading banks. These banks were among the first in the industry to implement real-time transactions and consolidated customer views.

real time relationship banking The Hogan Systems core banking software is an integrated suite of applications that provides online, real-time access to all of a bank’s customer relationships across the enterprise. This allows a bank to offer customers convenient, easy access to all their accounts how, when and where they want it. Banks can also improve operational efficiencies and reduce operating costs by eliminating the complexities of the traditional memo-post, batch-update model. The traditional model was premised on the limitations of older banking software, high telecommunications costs and the predominance of paper-based transactions.

enterprise-wide view of the customer Banks must broaden their customer-centric models beyond specific lines of business to an enterprise-wide view of both customer and product information. For this new perspective, Hogan clients can access customer, product and relationship data, which can be utilised by all lines of business and delivery channels across the enterprise.

exploiting new technologies CSC has made and continues to make significant investments in new technical infrastructure to improve flexibility and performance, including service-oriented architecture that accelerates banks’ abilities to integrate customer information, deposits, loans and card processing across multiple channels – including branch banking, call centres and internet services.

phone: +61 2 9034 2050 email: financialservices@csc.com.au website: www.csc.com/au/financial_services W ho ’ S W ho o F FSi

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core systems

finacle core banking solution

technologyone

Finacle from Infosys partners with banks to power-up their innovation agenda, enabling them to differentiate their products and services, enhance the customer experience and achieve greater operational efficiency. Finacle core banking solution is a strong innovation facilitator, enabling banks to accelerate growth, while maximising value from large-scale business transformation. It is a comprehensive, integrated yet modular business solution that effectively addresses the strategic and day-to-day challenges faced by banks. It is highly parameterisable, providing much needed flexibility to innovate and adapt to a dynamic environment. The solution has an integrated Client Relationship Management (CRM) module enabling banks to offer a rich and differentiated value proposition to customers. The layered service-oriented architecture (SOA), straight through processing capabilities, web-enabled technology, and 24x7 operations ensure multi-channel, multi-country and multi-currency implementations. The functionality rich modules in the solution provide banks with a varied palette of features to continuously innovate on their product and service offerings. From the services innovation perspective, Finacle offers a comprehensive and unified customer repository with capabilities to educate and empower customers.

The financial services industry is a dynamic and challenging marketplace. Scrutiny from stakeholders including governments, investors, industry groups and consumers demands the industry act with the highest integrity and operate with transparency and accountability. To manage the challenges and needs of this complex sector, a software solution must address the everyday issues of using information from disparate systems for informed decision making, organisation wide financial management, forecasting, cost transparency and management, project cost tracking, branch operations, real-time reporting, and regulatory compliance. It also needs to facilitate people management and staff retention. TechnologyOne, an Australian-owned and operated company, has been working with the financial services sector for more than 20 years and serves a variety of customers across this important industry. Our solutions provide for a range of sectors within the financial services industry, including: • Banks, credit unions and building societies • Insurance providers • Superannuation • Wealth management • Investment services The fully integrated TechnologyOne Financials solution provides financial services organisations with the ability to easily report on and manage core financial and operational information, as well as meet the regulatory reporting requirements of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The TechnologyOne enterprise suite offers one solution with one interface and one database, designed to drive innovation, improve operational efficiencies and introduce measurable process improvement.

key modules • Enterprise customer information • Consumer banking • Wealth management • Corporate banking • Trade finance • Islamic banking • Functional services • Reusable business components • Accounting backbone • Infrastructure Finacle is the chosen solution in over 140 banks across 73 countries.

finacle from infosys phone: +61 3 9860 2000 (Head Office Aus/NZ) email: finacleweb@infosys.com website: www.infosys.com/finacle 118

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w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

customer communicAtions

thunderhead

emc Document sciences

Thunderhead believes that customer communications are the frontline of your brand. Those organisations that share our belief that sending the wrong message through the wrong channel is wasteful at best – and damaging at worst – partner with Thunderhead. As a business 100 per cent focused on customer communications and with experience in working with 150 of the world’s leading financial services organisations, Thunderhead can show how we will transform the way you communicate. Thunderhead helps build richer, stronger, longer lasting relationships – making every interaction personal and relevant and delivering each communication through the channel your customer prefers while automating inefficient processes. Thunderhead delivers both top and bottom line benefits – cutting costs and streamlining key processes, while driving revenue growth by enabling better retention, cross-selling and up-selling. With a single, enterprise class, integrated solution Thunderhead NOW can manage all of your customer communications today. Built on open standards Thunderhead ensures that as future challenges and channels arise you will not be constrained by technology in meeting new customer expectations. With a fast growing, global footprint, Thunderhead has three regional headquarters – London, New York and Sydney. Our Australian business has 22 unique customers within the retail banking, insurance, wealth management and superannuation markets.

EMC Document Sciences delivers highly personalised and engaging communications that build loyalty and drive revenue through any channel. More than 500 organisations worldwide use our solutions to reduce development costs by up to 90 per cent, improve time-torevenue by as much as 75 per cent, and enhance customer experience.

thunderhead level 8, 99 york street sydney nsw 2000 phone: +61 2 9299 4560 email: nsmith@thunderhead.com contact: Nick Smith, VP APAC website: www.Thunderhead.com

one system for all customer communications • Consolidate multiple single purpose and disparate systems • Retire legacy systems and associated maintenance • Reduce print/mail costs with electronic delivery

get to your customers first. the right information, to the right customer, at the right time • Increase agility, flexibility and productivity by leveraging office tools • Reduce IT dependencies by empowering business users • Automate communications to increase volume and efficiency while

produce customer experiences that deliver results • Create communications that stand out from your competition • Increase response rates with relevant personalisation • Immediate results with on-demand communications • Enable multichannel delivery to satisfy customer preferences

where is our solution providing value? • Accelerated new product time-to-market by 50 per cent – Arrowhead General Insurance Agency • Reduced print operating costs by more than $1 million – Genworth Financial • Reduced statement production from days to hours – Santander Private Banking

emc 207 pacific highway st leonards nsw 2065 Australia phone: 1800 653 565 (AU) or 0800 999 362 (NZ) email: info_anz@emc.com website: www.anz.emc.com W ho ’ S W ho o F FS i

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customer experience

customer relAtionship mAnAgement

thunderhead

rightnow technologies

Thunderhead believes that customer communications are the frontline of your brand. Those organisations that share our belief that sending the wrong message through the wrong channel is wasteful at best – and damaging at worst – partner with Thunderhead. As a business 100 per cent focused on customer communications and with experience in working with 150 of the world’s leading financial services organisations, Thunderhead can show how we will transform the way you communicate. Thunderhead helps build richer, stronger, longer lasting relationships – making every interaction personal and relevant, and delivering each communication through the channel your customer prefers while automating inefficient processes. Thunderhead delivers both top and bottom line benefits – cutting costs and streamlining key processes, while driving revenue growth by enabling better retention, cross-selling and up-selling. With a single, enterprise class, integrated solution Thunderhead NOW can manage all of your customer communications today. Built on open standards Thunderhead ensures that as future challenges and channels arise you will not constrained by technology in meeting new customer expectations. With a fast growing, global footprint, Thunderhead has three regional headquarters – London, New York and Sydney. Our Australian business has 22 unique customers within the retail banking, insurance, wealth management and superannuation markets.

RightNow is helping rid the world of bad experiences one consumer interaction at a time, seven million times a day. RightNow CX, the customer experience suite, provides what an organisation needs to deliver exceptional customer experiences across the web, social networks and contact centres, all delivered via the cloud. With more than six billion consumers served, RightNow is the customer experience backbone for nearly 2,000 organisations around the globe. CX (Customer Experience) is a revolutionary approach to delivering great customer experiences that create loyalty, grow sales and increase efficiency. CX is not a new name for CRM (Customer Relationship Management). It is built from the ground up for consumer organisations and puts customers at the centre of the experience. RightNow has empowered over 140 financial services organisations worldwide to not only deliver superior experiences but also to save on operational costs and drive increased revenue. Our solutions give you the power to optimise your contact centres, reduce incoming calls and emails and provide the personalised experience your customers expect.

thunderhead level 8, 99 york street sydney nsw 2000 phone: +61 2 9299 4560 email: nsmith@thunderhead.com contact: Nick Smith, VP APAC website: www.Thunderhead.com 120

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RightNow will enable your financial services organisation to: • Lower the cost of managing your customers • Show reported improvements to your customer satisfaction • Introduce a dramatic efficiency rise to your contact centre • Centralise your knowledge so it is accessible to everyone • Increase up-sell and cross-sell opportunities • Demonstrate accountability for all customer interactions • Drill down analytics to accurately measure customer service, sales and marketing interactions

rightnow technologies level 4, 107 mount street north sydney nsw 2060 Australia phone: +61 2 8198 1334 fax: +61 2 8198 1353 email: anna.himsley@rightnow.com contact: Anna Himsley (APAC South Regional Marketing Manager) website: www.rightnow.com

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

customer relAtionship mAnAgement

DAtA loss prevention

sword ciboodle

symantec

For companies with critical information assets such as customer data, intellectual property and trade secrets, the risk of data loss is now higher than ever before. Security professionals must prevent data breaches, counter external threats, protect against uninformed or malicious insiders, prove compliance, and manage security efficiently – even as attacks grow more frequent, requirements more numerous, and IT infrastructures more complex. By measurably reducing risk, Symantec gives organisations renewed confidence to demonstrate compliance while protecting their customers, brand and intellectual property.

sword ciboodle phone: +61 2 9264 9566 +61 2 9275 8303 (direct) +61 (0) 414 465 856 contact: Paul Rainey, Account Director Australia and New Zealand website:: www.sword-ciboodle.com

symantec combines eDiscovery, data loss prevention, and encryption to define information governance Symantec enables organisations to manage and discover their information with unprecedented speed, efficiency and scale, both on-premise and in the cloud. Leading-edge software integrates Symantec’s archiving & eDiscovery solution, allowing organisations to archive and discover their information without compromising confidential data.

symantec’s market position • Endpoint Protection Platforms (#1 position in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 17 December 2010) • Enterprise Information Archiving (Positioned in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 29 October 2010) • Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention (#1 position in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 2 June 2010) • Secure Email Gateways (Positioned in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 27 April 2010) • MSSPs (Positioned in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 29 November 2010)

symantec level 14, 207 kent street sydney nsw 2000 Australia offices in Melbourne, canberra, Brisbane, perth, Auckland and Wellington phone: 1800 000 423 (Australia) or 0800 697 962 (New Zealand) website: www.symantec.com W ho ’ S W ho o F FS i

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DAtA services

Document mAnAgement systems

Data Solutions

sensis

thunderhead

Sensis® Data Solutions has been helping Australia’s banking and finance industry to manage customer data more efficiently for more than 15 years. Whether it is managing the accuracy of existing data or reducing the costs associated with new data collection, Sensis® Data Solutions has a commercial solution to help.

Thunderhead believes that customer communications are the frontline of your brand. Those organisations that share our belief that sending the wrong message through the wrong channel is wasteful at best – and damaging at worst – partner with Thunderhead. As a business 100 per cent focused on customer communications and with experience in working with 150 of the world’s leading financial services organisations, Thunderhead can show how we will transform the way you communicate. Thunderhead helps build richer, stronger, longer lasting relationships – making every interaction personal and relevant, and delivering each communication through the channel your customer prefers – while automating inefficient processes. Thunderhead delivers both top and bottom line benefits – cutting costs and streamlining key processes, while driving revenue growth by enabling better retention, cross-selling and up-selling. With a single, enterprise class, integrated solution Thunderhead NOW can manage all of your customer communications today. Built on open standards Thunderhead ensures that as future challenges and channels arise you will not constrained by technology in meeting new customer expectations. With a fast growing, global footprint, Thunderhead has three regional headquarters – London, New York and Sydney. Our Australian business has 22 unique customers within the retail banking, insurance, wealth management and superannuation markets.

white pages totalcheck® for fast, accurate and complete contact data Capturing customer details in a call centre, webform or CRM system is a critical function, but it can be challenging to achieve a high rate of accuracy when entering contact details. Our award-winning White Pages TotalCheck® harnesses the power of the White Pages® directories and Australia Posts’ Postal Address File to significantly improve the quality of your customer and prospect data, and reduce costs by validating contact details in real-time.

macromatch® making every communication count Minimise wastage and maximise the value of your customer communications by keeping your contact data up to date, accurate and complete. Macromatch is the only service able to verify your customer data against the White Pages® and Yellow Pages® directories, as well as Australia Post and other external data sources, to enable your customer data to be as current, correct and comprehensive as possible.

sensis Data solutions

thunderhead level 8, 99 york street sydney nsw 2000

® Registered trade mark of Telstra Corporation Limited

phone: 1800 033 807 contact: Sensis Data Solutions website: www.sensisdata.com.au 122

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phone: +61 2 9299 4560 email: nsmith@thunderhead.com contact: Nick Smith, VP APAC website: www.Thunderhead.com

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

enterprise ApplicAtions

enterprise Architecture

technologyone

The financial services industry is a dynamic and challenging marketplace. Scrutiny from stakeholders including governments, investors, industry groups and consumers demands the industry act with the highest integrity and operate with transparency and accountability. To manage the challenges and needs of this complex sector, a software solution must address the everyday issues of using information from disparate systems for informed decision making, organisation-wide financial management, forecasting, cost transparency and management, project cost tracking, branch operations, real-time reporting, and regulatory compliance. It also needs to facilitate people management and staff retention. TechnologyOne, an Australian owned and operated company, has been working with the financial services sector for more than 20 years and serves a variety of customers across this important industry. Our solutions provide for a range of sectors within the financial services industry, including: • Banks, credit unions and building societies • Insurance providers • Superannuation • Wealth management • Investment services The fully integrated TechnologyOne Financials solution provides financial services organisations with the ability to easily report on and manage core financial and operational information, as well as meet the regulatory reporting requirements of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The TechnologyOne enterprise suite offers one solution with one interface and one database, designed to drive innovation, improve operational efficiencies and introduce measurable process improvement.

Enterprise Architects (EA) provides business and IT executives with the information, insights and capability to rapidly plan and implement corporate IT strategy through high performance architecture solutions. We are leaders in IT strategy and architecture, delivering IT strategy, blueprints and investment roadmaps, and working with clients to develop their own architecture practices. As one of the world’s most respected strategy and architecture firms, we assist clients with specialist consulting, training and recruitment services, complemented by our reach into a vast professional network of architects worldwide. From offices in Australia and Europe, and with partners in the US and South Africa, EA has led hundreds of engagements in the banking and financial services sector.

solutions Consulting: Partnering with CIOs to align business and IT goals, EA delivers IT strategy, investment roadmaps, blueprints, transformation planning and governance, CIO decision frameworks, cloud adoption frameworks, EA operating model design and EA maturity assessment. Training: Providing capability and uplift of architecture teams and individuals, EA is Australia’s leading provider of TOGAF training and certification, advanced architecture methods and business architecture. Recruitment: Focusing solely on the enterprise architecture and solution architecture job family, EA utilises specialised competency assessments to accurately match architects to requirements. We have a unique ability to tap into an international pool of active and passive job seekers in architecture. Through our unique approach and expertise we enable clients to quickly adapt their business and technology operations to meet evolving market needs and stay ahead of the competition.

eA level 46, rialto south tower 525 collins street melbourne vic 3000 Australia phone: +61 3 9615 6500 email: reception@enterprisearchitects.com W ho ’ S W ho o F FS i

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enterprise informAtion mAnAgement

enterprise releAse mAnAgement

informatica

alinement

Financial services organisations require trusted, timely, and comprehensive data in the systems and applications for risk management, regulatory compliance, trade execution, client management, accelerated value from ongoing mergers and acquisitions and combat fraud. Informatica (NASDAQ: INFA) is the world’s number one independent leader of data integration and data management software to access, cleanse, govern, standardise and deliver the right data your business depends on for success. Over 4,200 organisations including 600+ financial service companies around the world are gaining a competitive advantage with Informatica’s products and services. Informatica provides solutions in the following areas: • Counterparty and legal entity reference data management for Basel compliance and credit risk management • Data services for a single view of risk across your enterprise • Data quality and metadata management for enterprise data governance • Data masking for data safeguard and privacy compliance • Client/customer reference data management to deliver a 360 degree view of your clients, accounts, households, extended relationships across all lines of business for your business and customer facing systems • Securities reference data management to improve securities trade execution and settlement • SWIFT certified data transformation solutions for payment and trade integration

alinement is a specialist consultancy that assists leading organisations to define, deliver and deploy sophisticated technology-based solutions that drive business success. Our goal is to provide executives and senior managers with visibility of their enterprise change portfolio to improve governance and facilitate strategic decision making. If you face the challenge of executing multiple programmes concurrently we can assist by introducing pragmatic Enterprise Release Management processes that coordinate delivery schedules, control interdependencies and improve integration and testing effectiveness. alinement’s unique release-centric approach to solution delivery is the result of extensive industry experience and the latest management research that combines to reduce execution risk, accelerate delivery and optimise release capacity. Our proprietary portfolio management processes and reporting tools consolidate multiple, previously siloed, views of a change and release management that establishes line-of-sight visibility to stakeholders, customers or end-users of the business solution. The result is a coherent, enterprise perspective of the programs, projects, maintenance changes and enhancements that impact the organisation that can be consolidated by our release-dashboard, irrespective of the process or tools currently utilised by your team. Our services include: • Enterprise release strategy and management • Portfolio governance and program start up • Program execution framework • Implementation of project and development tools • Consolidated and coherent status reporting • Program health checks and reviews To better understand how alinement can provide assist you to improve visibility of your change portfolio and ensure future initiatives get off to the best possible start, please contact us for an obligation-free discussion.

informatica phone: +61 2 8907 4400 email: info-au@informatica.com website: www.Informatica.com

alinement network phone: 1-800-ALINEMENT email: louis.taborda@alinement.net contact: Dr. Louis Taborda (Managing Consultant) website: www.alinement.net/services 124

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w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

finAnciAl ApplicAtion plAtform

geogrAphic informAtion systems (gis)

milestone group

esri Australia

Milestone Group’s pControl Funds Processing platform overcomes issues arising from limitations of existing core technologies, satellite systems, spreadsheets and manual processes. pControl represents the realisation of a long held industry requirement for an investment and funds product platform that simplifies fund operations with fully integrated transaction, accounting, process control, data management and reconciliation capabilities. pControl supports multiple business functions and integrates seamlessly with existing core technologies. It services today’s increasingly complex inter-funded product structures and related business processes. pControl delivers end-to-end operational efficiency for: • NAV control • Cash allocation and rebalancing • Unitised order management • Income distribution and tax calculations • NAV / unit pricing • Reconciliation • Fee rebate management and billing The approach delivers immediate efficiency and control improvements by automating complex processes and augmenting existing core platforms while replacing surround technologies that do not fully meet current business requirements. pControl delivers the strategic objective of a simplified system architecture for fund operations. This delivers superior business performance as measured by business efficiency (unit cost reduction), operational risk, service level management and business agility. Clients benefit from our global presence, domain knowledge and operational experience in delivering business results.

For more than three decades Esri Australia has partnered with thousands of government and commercial enterprises to deliver data mapping and location intelligence solutions that have transformed the way business leaders look at opportunity and manage their organisations. Esri Australia’s location intelligence solutions are underpinned by the world leading Esri Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. Worldwide, financial institutions use this technology to map the geography of their business data to expose patterns and relationships otherwise hidden in the information labyrinths of numeric tables and databases. Whether evaluating risk, quantifying customer value or effectively managing distribution networks, location is the common paradigm that brings context to information, across an entire business. By visually representing data on a map, complex scenarios are translated into a universal language – one that enables employees at all levels to make informed decisions confidently and in a timely manner. When you partner with Esri Australia, you’re partnering with the nation’s leading location intelligence and GIS specialists. Our team of highly skilled professionals includes business analysts, engineers, cartographers and software developers. We’ve been part of some of the most exciting GIS projects on Australian shores and have worked with the nation’s most progressive geo-enabled enterprises. Discover what insight Esri Australia’s location intelligence solutions could deliver to your business. Call Gary Johnson, Esri Australia’s Principal Consultant – Financial Services on 1800 447 111 today.

milestone group level 21, 9 castlereagh street sydney nsw 2000 phone: +61 2 8224 2600 email: enquiries@milestonegroup.com.au contact: Mark Neary, Managing Director, Client Relationships & Business Development APAC website: www.milestonegroup.com.au

esri Australia level 3, 111 elizabeth street Brisbane QlD 4000 phone: 1800 447 111 email: connect@esriaustralia.com.au website: www.esriaustralia.com.au W ho ’ S W ho o F FSi

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insurAnce ApplicAtions

emc captiva

Axe group

EMC Captiva transforms paper from a liability into immediate business advantage by converting your documents into application-ready information.

Axelerated Solutions provides the Axelerator Insurance Platform, the first adaptive Straight Through Processing (STP) system for automation of new business, claims and lifecycle services. Axelerator provides one-touch and personalised process execution, with smart handling of exceptions to enhance an insurer’s competitive advantage. A single platform manages all channels with accessibility via the web, kiosks or offline laptops. As a rules driven platform, the business can make changes directly through configuration for product and process innovations to keep pace with market dynamics. Axelerator automates critical processes which underscore sales, claims and client servicing. Three software modules are provided as working models which contain generic working systems ready to be configured, as follows: • New business: STP for quote, application, electronic underwriting and fulfilment, including back office processing • Claims processing: Automated claims process from lodgement through assessment, payment and resolution, and management of ongoing claims • Lifecycle services: Customer lifecycle services with renewals, midterm adjustments and change details, including self-help and single customer view The Axelerator Insurance Platform is highly extensible, enabling new channels, products or customers to be added quickly. In life insurance, Axelerator is used for retail, group, direct and bancassurance lines of business and for general insurance in both personal and commercial lines. We are a division of Axe Group, a fresh thinking software company enabling clients to outperform. Our strength is building unique solutions to complex business problems with our domain experts enabling our clients to achieve their market goals. Since 1997 we have consistently delivered for clients.

reduce paper management costs • NEW Production Auto Learning reduces total cost of ownership by simplifying project configuration/maintenance and increasing document throughput and level of automation • Eliminate paper storage costs by scanning documents into electronic images and facilitating storage in content repositories/archival systems • Reduce data entry labour costs by automating data extraction • Eliminate postal/shipping costs by enabling distributed capture from remote locations

reduce your risk and the cost of compliance • Mitigate the risk of unmanaged paper • Adhere to laws and regulations by automating compliance policies • Reduce process errors

where is our solution providing value? • VicSuper improved efficiency and freed up staff to focus on higher value tasks by automating all inbound correspondence with EMC’s Digital Mailroom solution • Morgan Stanley created a manageable correspondence trail to reduce risk of disputes • Univar provided instant access to 700,000 invoices and increased productivity by 35 per cent • Commerzbank saves US$5 million annually, including US$300,000 in postal costs

emc 207 pacific highway st leonards nsw 2065

Axe group level 15, 60 margaret street sydney nsw 2000

phone: 1800 653 565 (AU) or 0800 999 362 (NZ) email: info_anz@emc.com website: www.anz.emc.com

phone: +61 2 8081 6300 email: fresh-thinking@axegroup.com website: www.axegroup.com

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insurAnce ApplicAtions

csc Australia

oneshield

CSC offers systems designed by the most industry savvy business analysts and architects in the world. We deliver quality-centric, scalable software, engineered in compliance with industry standards and supported by a secure, integrated infrastructure.

Headquartered in Westborough, MA, USA, OneShield, Inc. is the developer of OneShield Dragon®, an innovative, modern, rules and tools-based, data-driven policy management suite for carriers, major brokers and Managing General Agents (MGAs) handling personal, commercial and specialty lines in the general insurance market. A highly configurable tool set enables OneShield customers to configure all components of Dragon by utilising internal business and IT expertise. Dragon’s defined standards-based business processes and webenabled components, including underwriting, billing, business intelligence, rating, workflow, compliance management, CRM and policy administration, enable insurance organisations to deploy new products faster and manage existing business better.

life insurance LiFE provides the means of controlling all aspects of policy administration, introducing new lines of business, setting up new routes to market, and providing an architecture that enables the integration of disparate systems within an overall IT infrastructure.

general insurance CSC has a large range of industry leading general insurance products through POLISY – a modern, proven, integrated general insurance administration system that defines and issues personal lines and commercial lines of general insurance products. The client server architecture of POLISY has enabled it to be implemented as a stand alone solution and as a component of a back office solution for call centres offering insurance services directly to the public via telephone sales teams. LiFE and POLISY can be operated from a common function suite, allowing for a single client record for use across all lines of business

oneshield website: www.oneshield.com

reinsurance SICS is CSC’s international insurance and reinsurance solution which supports multiple reinsurance strategies and is available for three markets: property and casualty reinsurance, life reinsurance and primary insurance for complex property risks. It manages administrative functions such as underwriting, cession/retrocession, claims handling, treaty administration, accounting and retention management on one global platform.

csc Australia 26 talavera road macquarie park nsw 2113 phone: +61 2 9034 2050 email: financialservices@csc.com.au website: www.csc.com/au/financial_services W ho ’ S W ho o F FS i

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insurAnce softwAre

fis software

target harlosh

FIS Software (FIS) is dedicated to developing and delivering packagedbased global insurance solutions that enable life insurance, pensions and investment companies to run their businesses more efficiently, and respond to territorial legislation and regulations. Our software solutions are based on ALIS, a single platform for all life and pensions, group and individual product lines, with unique functional depth and comprehensive automation, including modules which are typically outside of policy administration solution boundaries. ALIS customer-centric policy administration software incorporates all activities along the insurance policy lifecycle – from marketing through underwriting, billing, servicing and changes, to claims and exit processing. ALIS addresses diversified group and individual risk products, including term, endowment, unit link, with profits, bonds and pensions, and supports a wide range of covers and riders, benefits, contribution types and internal and external funds. ALIS is a parameter driven platform with a comprehensive configurable business rules engine. Our clients gain the flexibility needed to modify business process, as well as to introduce innovative features and new products, rapidly and with low cost and low business risk. A complete straight-through processing solution with multicompany, multi-currency, and multi-lingual capabilities positions ALIS as an ideal platform for BPO and L&P providers alike. While focusing on maintaining ALIS functional superiority, FIS continues to invest in moving ALIS forward using best of breed technology. We guarantee its compatibility and seamless integration with all advanced technologies and architectures. ALIS is proven in production in 11 countries and manages large portfolios efficiently.

Target Harlosh is a leader and innovator in the provision of business solutions for insurance including policy administration and channel enablement. InsuranceFaces, our family of advanced solutions, provides extensive capabilities to insurers looking to compete in a rapidly evolving, global marketplace. • Agility – Enabling existing channels and products to operate in a more fluid and adaptive manner, as well as addressing new opportunities more rapidly • Speed to market – Both in our packaged solutions and in our offerings aimed at channel and eBusiness enablement • Extending existing systems – Assisting our clients to extend the capabilities of their existing legacy systems, and providing a risk-reduced migration strategy for systems and services

fis software level 7, 111 elizabeth street sydney nsw 2000 Australia phone: +61 2 8222 3100 email: info@fis-software.com website: www.fis-software.com 128

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the insurancefaces (if) family of solutions at a glance • IF Channel – Designed for insurers who require product agility across variety of channels – including affinity, white label, extranet and internet facing • IF FullCycle – Our customer-centric enterprise policy administration solution designed for insurers requiring fullyfeatured and advanced insurance business processing capability • IF FullCycle Managed Service – A managed service version of IF FullCycle that provides access to all of the features of our onsite solution with a focus on new entrants, underwriting agencies and those clients delivering products where an onsite solution is not cost effective

target harlosh level 27, 101 collins street melbourne vic 3000 phone: +61 3 9653 7378 email: brett.arthur@harlosh.com contact: Brett Arthur, Regional Director ANZ website: www.harlosh.com.au

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

it systems mAnAgement

mAnAgeD services

kaseya

fujitsu

Kaseya is the leading global provider of automated IT systems management software. With the deployment option of on-premises or our on-demand cloud offering, Kaseya solutions empower everyone – from individual consumers to large corporations and outsourcing service providers – to proactively manage and control IT assets remotely, easily and efficiently from one integrated web based platform. At Kaseya we know that the primary objective of every IT professional is centered around efficiency, security, availability and aligning of the IT objectives with the overall business strategies. We also know that as budgets decrease, business demands continue to grow – executing the right IT systems strategy will enable IT professionals to meet these challenges head on. The Kaseya automated approach to IT systems management is the ultimate solution for IT professionals seeking to improve productivity, reduce duplication and contain costs. Kaseya solutions are trusted by outsourcing service providers, and in a wide variety of industries, including banking, consumer packaged goods, education, financial services, government, healthcare, military, real estate, retail and transportation. Our solution has effected a positive change worldwide in the way IT services are delivered. Kaseya is privately held with more than 30 offices in 20 countries.

The financial services industry in Australia and New Zealand comprises more than 30 per cent of total private sector activity, and underpins the economic growth of the broader community. Thankfully the shocks which have been created by the global financial crisis are abating and in our local markets we have a vibrant core comprising a number of large and well established players as well as some new and innovative entrants. Today there is significant opportunity to step out from the pack, and differentiate in terms of customer experience and value. Whether you provide core retail banking services, wealth management or insurance offerings, or niche services like investment banking, there are significant opportunities to create additional shareholder value by providing the right services, delivered in the right way to the right customers. We call this our ‘customer-centric’ approach to financial services and this underpins everything Fujitsu does in the sector. Fujitsu provides a comprehensive suite of services and solutions, build around customer centricity, from superior customer insight through segmentation, to channel management, sales force effectiveness solutions, and into core business systems and processes. We also provide supporting applications and infrastructure services including secure desktop solutions, data centre processing, and a range of products and services to enable you to create and deliver more agile services and products to your customers. We also believe that environmental sustainability is an essential pre-requisite for success, and our solutions are of the highest environmental calibre.

kaseya level 14, 56 pitt street sydney nsw 2000 Australia phone: +61 2 9293 7900 email: sales@kaseya.com website: www.kaseya.com.au

fujitsu contact Details: www.fujitsu.com/au/contact/ website: www.fujitsu.com/au/solutions/industry-solutions/financial/ index.html

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mAnAgeD services

gen-i

telstra

Are you looking for a cost effective, flexible and simple approach to your ICT needs? Do you need greater alignment between your business drivers and your ICT outcomes? Gen-i is the multinational ‘ICT heart’ of the Telecom NZ Group of companies, which together have revenues of more than $5.5 billion and employ 8,600 people. Gen-i is uniquely positioned to deliver Trans-Tasman, end-to-end managed services solutions combining IT & Telecommunications through 17 award-winning Centres of Excellence. Our ICT solutions are supported by more than 3,000 people who are proud to be experts at what they do, industry partners who are truly world class, and resources that set benchmarks for the rest of the industry in terms of breadth, functionality and scale. We also have a decade of specialisation in the Australian Financial Services Industry with regional clients including, ANZ, Aon, Westpac, IAG, CBA, ASB Bank, KiwiBank and BNZ. We drive IT & Telecommunications out of the confines of IT departments into the business, across the boardroom and create satisfying customer experiences. We do this through our Centres of Excellence in Unified Communications and Collaboration, Information Management, Applications Delivery and Virtualisation, and ultimately deliver Managed ICT. Gen-i’s customer-focused approach combined with the unique Gen-i 9 engagement methodology ensures that our customers, and their customers, are at the core of all ICT programs.

Telstra is Australia’s leading telecommunications and information services company. We offer a full range of services and compete in all telecommunications markets throughout Australia, providing more than 9.2 million Australian fixed line and 9.7 million mobile services, including 5.2 million 3G services. Our main activities include the provision of: • basic access services to most homes and businesses in Australia • local and long distance telephone calls in Australia and international calls to and from Australia • mobile telecommunications services • broadband access and content • a comprehensive range of data and internet services (Telstra BigPond®) • management of business customers’ IT and/or telecommunications services • wholesale services to other carriers, carriage service providers and ISPs • advertising, search and information services (Sensis) • cable distribution services for FOXTEL’s® cable subscription television services One of our major strengths is our vast geographical coverage through both our fixed and mobile network infrastructure. This network and systems infrastructure underpins the carriage and termination of the majority of Australia’s domestic and international voice and data telephony traffic. Telstra owns 50 per cent of FOXTEL® and its international businesses include: • CSL New World Mobility Group, one of Hong Kong’s leading mobile operators • TelstraClear Limited, the second largest full service carrier in New Zealand • Reach Ltd, a provider of global connectivity and international voice and satellite services • SouFun Holdings Limited, a leading real estate and furnishings website in China • Norstar Media and Autohome / PCPop, leading Chinese internet business in the online auto and digital device advertising sectors

gen-i sydney, melbourne, Brisbane, Auckland, wellington, christchurch phone: 1800 803 755 website: www.gen-i.com.au 130

Who ’S Wh o oF FSi

telstra phone: 1300TELSTRA (1300 835 787) website: www.telstra.com.au

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

multi-chAnnel communicAtions

outsourcing

computershare communication services capgemini Computershare Communication Services Pty Limited (entity of Computershare Limited ASX:CPU) is a leading global provider of business process outsourcing and multi-channel communication solutions. The world’s leading organisations depend on the communication services’ business to help transform their business processes by assisting them to capture, organise and publish businesscritical data and documents. Computershare is a ‘behind the scenes’ organisation, yet plays a pivotal role in managing and delivering services for clients, of which there are over 10,000 globally.

colour Organisations can for the first time deliver compelling, relevant customer communications (essential, correspondence and/or DM) in full colour at an affordable price, utilising our InfoPrint 5000 high speed variable colour inkjet printers.

Dynamic content publishing Organisations can produce dynamic content through our end-toend multi-channel publishing and production system that provides powerful co-authoring capabilities and a central online repository, ensuring robust and accurate version control. The intuitive web interface enables clients to create, edit, approve and publish personalised communications in real-time or batch mode, then deliver documents via multiple channels.

communications consulting Our communication consultants bring together client stakeholders from marketing, technology, operations, finance and legal to collaborate and align communications with business objectives.

computershare communication services 452 Johnston street Abbotsford victoria 3067 phone: +61 (0) 414 885 243 email: ross.ingleton@computershare.com contact: Ross Ingleton, Sales Director website: www.computershare.com.au/communicationservices

About capgemini and the collaborative Business experience Capgemini, one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, enables its clients to transform and perform through technologies. Capgemini provides its clients with insights and capabilities that boost their freedom to achieve superior results through a unique way of working, the Collaborative Business Experience™. The Group relies on its global delivery model called Rightshore®, which aims to get the right balance of the best talent from multiple locations, working as one team to create and deliver the optimum solution for clients. Present in 40 countries, Capgemini reported 2010 global revenues of EUR 8.7 billion and employs around 110,000 people worldwide, with 1,000 of those employees servicing Australian clients.

unsurpassed financial services experience Capgemini’s Global Financial Services Business Unit brings deep industry experience, innovative service offerings and next generation global delivery to serve the financial services industry. With a network of 17,000 professionals serving over 900 clients for nearly 40 years, Capgemini has domain experience that is unsurpassed. Our highly specialised staff bring a singular focus on financial services which includes: • Industry best practices: Gain access to a wealth of best practices from hundreds of clients in more than 30 countries • Deep technical knowledge: Our global network includes over 15 centres of excellence dedicated to FS areas such as VisionPlus, core banking, policy administration, and claims processing • Industry leading partnerships: We have collaborative alliances with technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP in addition to FS partnerships with companies like Calypso, Fiserv, Guidewire, Pegasystems, Sungard and Teradata • Practical thought leadership: Capgemini brings our clients the latest in innovation and insights through four global reports devoted to retail banking, wealth, payments and insurance

capgemini twitter: www.twitter.com/capgemini_aust website: www.capgemini.com.au W ho ’ S W ho o F FSi

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computershare communication services infosys Australia & new Zealand Computershare Communication Services Pty Limited (entity of Computershare Limited ASX:CPU) is a leading global provider of business process outsourcing and multi-channel communication solutions. The world’s leading organisations depend on the communication services’ business to help transform their business processes by assisting them to capture, organise and publish business critical data and documents. Computershare is a ‘behind the scenes’ organisation, yet plays a pivotal role in managing and delivering services for clients, of which there are over 10,000 globally. Computershare Communication Services’ platform provides back-office automation capability and scale on-demand, enabling organisations to streamline complex and paper-based business processes without upfront labour and capital investments in on-premise software solutions. Our implementations are backed by an experienced, Australian-based solutions team, ensuring your specific business requirements are met and that the benefits flow on to your customers and suppliers. As over 80 per cent of daily business is conducted using unstructured information such as paper documents, faxes and email, having solutions that help send, access and receive payment information more effectively is essential. Our capabilities include: • Accounts payable (invoice processing) • Accounts receivable (receipts processing incl locked box) – 95 per cent automation rate for payment allocation and reconciliation with guaranteed same-day value • Digital mailroom • Applications and claims processing (mortgages, loans) • Return mail • Response management

Many of the world’s most successful organisations rely on the 130,000 people of Infosys to deliver measurable business value. Infosys provides business consulting, technology, engineering and outsourcing services to help clients in over 30 countries build tomorrow’s enterprise. These solutions focus on providing strategic differentiation and operational superiority to our clients including: • Six of the top seven US banks • Four of the top five European banks • Three of the top four Australian banks With Infosys, clients are assured of a transparent business partner, world-class processes, speed of execution and the power to stretch their technology budget by leveraging the global delivery model that we pioneered. Our business, domain, technology and change management expertise, along with a range of highly mature financial services solutions and accelerators, are designed to help your business to optimise, compete and transform. We focus on: • Business transformation: Consulting; process excellence; IT strategies; complex change; next generation commerce; legacy modernisation; infrastructure consulting; application integration and development; global sourcing; enterprise information • Business innovation: Finacle banking systems; rapid product innovation; new business process excellence ; insurance modernisation; mortgage and banking business platforms • Business optimisation: Packaged applications; enterprise content and architecture; application and business process outsourcing; infrastructure management; operational efficiency; independent testing; security service; quality consulting

computershare communication services 452 Johnston street Abbotsford victoria 3067

infosys Australia & new Zealand po Box 528 collins street west melbourne vic 8007 other offices in Auckland, Brisbane, christchurch, sydney, perth, Wellington

phone: +61 (0) 414 885 243 email: ross.ingleton@computershare.com contact: Ross Ingleton, Sales Director website: www.computershare.com.au/communicationservices 132

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phone: +61 3 9860 2000 email: ausinfo@infosys.com website: www.infosys.com

w hoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; s w ho Di r ec to ry

outsourcing

mphasis

tata consultancy services

MphasiS is a $1 billion global service provider, delivering technology based solutions to clients across the world. With currently over 41,000 people, MphasiS services clients in banking and capital markets; insurance; manufacturing; communications, media and entertainment; healthcare and life sciences, transportation and logistics; retail and consumer packaged goods; energy and utilities; and governments around the world. Our competency lies in our ability to offer integrated service offerings in applications, infrastructure services and business process outsourcing capabilities.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) offers an incredibly broad scope of expertise across financial services, matched to a full service mix of offerings across IT services, business solutions, and outsourcing. TCS supports firms with applications maintenance and operational support, including mission critical applications such as online banking, ATMs and payments networks, as well as operational solutions in capital markets, cards, risk management and compliance. The TCS BaNCS software suite encompasses an array of pre-configured, customisable banking, capital markets and insurance products, live across more than 250 customer sites across 80 countries. TCS also has deep expertise in non-domain-specific applications, including enterprise resource planning, client relationship management, human resources, payroll, business intelligence and analytics. Drawing upon our global delivery capabilities, we deliver business process outsourcing services including collections, and mortgage operations services and reconciliations. TCS also provides depth of expertise in the IT back office. Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s creating a new data centre, planning infrastructure transformation, or implementing an IT risk management framework, our senior-level consultants enable high-profile, mission-critical projects to succeed. TCS is particularly strong in testing services, including performance testing, functional testing, automated testing, test management, and regression testing. TCS is proud to partner with over 15 financial institutions in Australia and New Zealand, including the local operations of global investment banks and three of the top four domestic banks.

Banking and capital markets expertise Our banking and capital markets capabilities have been built through years of focused investment in building domain skills and relevant technology expertise, nurtured through some of the longest standing relationships and success stories in the industry. Our global client list includes not only nine of the top 10 universal banks, but also small and mid-sized regional banks.

insurance expertise Our insurance unit has an extensive pool of industry experts across life and annuities, and property and casualty that develop and implement domain focused solutions which are relevant to your insurance business, clients and partners. For more than 10 years we have delivered our services to insurance clients across the globe by leveraging our flexible business and pricing models, executed within our global service delivery organisation.

mphasis suite 9, norberry Avenue 170-190 pacific highway north sydney 2067 phone: +61 2 99542222 email: Sales@mphasis.com contacts: Anu Agrawal, Vice President, Banking and Capital Markets APAC; Abhimanyu Bhola (Vice President, Insurance website: www.mphasis.com

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outsourcing

recruitment

telstra

Ambition

Ambition is a leading global boutique recruitment business operating in a select number of specialist areas across key international cities. We access hard-to-find, high calibre professionals within banking and financial services, finance and accounting, and technology. In Ambition’s technology recruitment business, our consultants are specialists in their respective technology disciplines. We mirror the IT departments of our national portfolio of clients with three dedicated teams of consultants focusing on applications, business information and infrastructure. Our consultants are trained to be active rather than reactive and to listen, advise and deliver exceptional recruitment service. Our customers are made up of two overlapping groups, candidates searching for jobs and clients looking to fill those jobs. We look forward to discussing your recruitment needs with you.

telstra phone: 1300TELSTRA (1300 835 787) website: www.telstra.com.au 134

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Ambition sydney level 5, 55 clarence street sydney nsw 2000 view on google maps phone: +61 2 9249 5000 fax: +61 2 9249 5050 email: info@ambition.com.au

Brisbane level 7, 410 Queen street Brisbane QlD 4000 view on google maps phone: +61 7 3020 0300 fax: +61 7 3229 3939 email: info@ambition.com.au

melbourne level 36, 140 william street melbourne vic 3000 view on google maps phone: +61 3 8629 1000 fax: +61 3 8629 1050 email: info@ambition.com.au

parramatta level 4, 3 horwood place parramatta nsw 2150 view on google maps phone: +61 2 9633 7300 fax: +61 2 9633 7350 email: info@ambition.com.au

websites: www.ambition.com.au www.buildingbetterfutures.com

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

recruitment

risk compliAnce

robert walters

Arcsight llc, an hp company

specialists in it recruitment

ArcSight, an HP company, is a leading global provider of security and compliance management solutions that intelligently identify and mitigate cyber threat and risk for businesses and government agencies. ArcSight helps protect enterprises and government agencies by providing complete visibility and critical insights into their IT infrastructure across all users, networks, datacenters and applications.

Recruiting IT staff requires a high degree of specialist knowledge and insight. Our team of recruitment specialists have the market intelligence, technology and processes in place to identify high calibre IT talent that can add value to your business. Our consultants recruit within technical verticals, ensuring they are specialists within their market and have a strong network of both candidates and clients. We recruit for permanent, contract and temporary IT professionals across a wide range of technical skill-sets covering the banking, finance, insurance, telecommunications, and wider commerce industries. We work across a range of clients from start-ups through to enterprises and multinationals and are widely recognised as a market leader for IT jobs in Australia. Roles we recruit include: • IT helpdesk/desktop support • Analyst programmer/developer • Database administrator/Systems administrator • Network administrator/engineer • Test analyst/manager • Web specialist • Technical writer • IT trainer • IT security/audit • Architect • ERP/CRM consultant • Project manager • IT manager

About robert walters

products Our key product, the ArcSight ETRM platform, is a centralised enterprise monitoring platform that enables businesses and government agencies to proactively safeguard digital assets; comply with corporate and regulatory policy; and control internal and external risks.

services ArcSight Global Services help customers quickly turn their enterprise threat and risk management investments into tangible results from the smallest implementations to the most complex application and infrastructure environments.

customers We have more than 1,800 customers around the globe including the world’s leading corporations and worldwide governments.

partners ArcSight also has more than 100 security alliance partnerships to ensure interoperability, with over 230 security products and a worldwide reseller network of strategic MSSP and reseller partners.

Robert Walters is one of the world’s leading international recruitment consultancies, with a network of 43 offices spanning 20 countries. We specialise in the placement of permanent, contract and temporary positions across all levels of seniority and are able to meet the demands of clients whose needs extend beyond local markets.

Arcsight llc hp sales Building 450 Alexandra road singapore 119950

robert walters phone: +61 2 8289 3129 contact: Erica Lindberg website: www.robertwalters.com.au

phone: +65 6572 3605 email: arcsight-info-apac@hp.com contact: Jo-Anne Sia website: www.arcsight.com W ho ’ S W ho o F FSi

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risk AnD pAyments

security

iBm Australia pty ltd

m86 security

Today, money has been reduced to zeros and ones. It’s intangible and invisible. It’s information. Thankfully, intelligence is being infused into the way the world works including our financial systems. Unprecedented computing power and advanced analytics can turn oceans of ones and zeros into insights, in real time, which means we can have a safer, more transparent and intelligent financial systems for a smarter planet. IBM is committed to the financial services industry and building a smarter planet. • Over 8,000 practitioners are fully dedicated to the financial services industry across the globe • IBM client engagements include eight of the top 10 banks in the world, eight of the top 10 insurers in the world and 13 of the top 15 financial markets firms in the world (as ranked by the Fortune Global 500) • IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBV) has 10 researchers/analysts to create thought leadership for banking, insurance and financial markets clients • A wide range of services specifically developed for the finance industry from information technology hardware, software and services; business consulting services; business transformation outsourcing; and IT financing

M86 Security is the largest provider of secure web gateways and the largest independent provider of web and email content security in the world. Four leading technology companies have merged to become a full-service, single source provider of web and email gateway security, encryption and data loss prevention solutions. Combining web and content filtering, best-in-breed web and email security, and real-time blended threat detection technology, M86 Security delivers deep experience and superior product performance across all three solution sets.

iBm 601 pacific highway st leonards nsw 2065 phone: 13 24 26 email: ibmfss@au1.ibm.com twitter: www.twitter.com/IBMFinanceAU website: www.ibm.com/financialservices/au 136

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technology pioneers and innovation leaders M86 Security provides clients with integrated web and email threat protection, including the most sophisticated secure web gateway available. Our solutions protect organisations and institutions from inappropriate content, legal liability, compromised data, lost bandwidth and reduced network performance. Our email and web security products monitor and filter malware, spam, non-essential web applications, distributed content and the many distractions associated with web and email access – whether they are part of inbound or outbound traffic. These capabilities contribute significantly to the enforcement of Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs), oversight and compliance with regulatory mandates, and maintenance of safe work/ learning environments. The M86 product portfolio includes: • M86 Secure Web Gateway • M86 Secure Web Gateway Hybrid • M86 Web Filtering and Reporting Suite • M86 WebMarshal • M86 MailMarshal Secure Email Gateway • M86 MailMarshal Email Content Manager • M86 MailMarshal Secure Email Server • M86 MailMarshal SendSecure

m86 security level 7, 100 walker street, north sydney nsw 2060 phone: +61 2 9466 5800 email: M86-APACSales@m86security.com website: www.m86security.com

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

security

sophos

symantec

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection offers an integrated solution for anti-malware and data protection. A single agent delivers anti-virus and anti-spyware protection, client firewall, data loss prevention, content monitoring, management ]of removable storage devices and detects and blocks unauthorised software. Sophos Email Security and Data Protection enables complete security and data protection across the entire email infrastructure, eliminating known and unknown threats including spam, phishing and malware, and preventing information leakage and compliance violations. Sophos Web Security and Control make web protection simple by blocking web threats at the source and providing safe, productive access to the web resources and tools users need -all while enforcing acceptable use policies and providing essential safeguards against data loss. Sophos Mobile Control provides comprehensive mobile device management, enabling the ability to simply and quickly secure, monitor, and control the configuration of these devices connecting to the corporate network, allowing similar levels of control and protection with company laptops and desktops. Sophos SafeGuard Enterprise provides multi-layered endpoint data security combining encryption and data loss prevention. The centrally-managed solution secures data on desktops, laptops and removable media.

Symantec’s mission is to protect the world’s information and allow organisations to confidently conduct business in today’s connected world. Threats to information continually evolve, and security solutions from Symantec help organisations identify and combat coordinated, multi-pronged attacks on information which are striking businesses with increasing frequency. The Symantec Security Framework is a portfolio of security products and services that enable organisations to counter emerging threats, pursue new innovations, support new computing models – such as mobile, cloud and virtualisation – and simplify security management. By providing relevant, actionable intelligence and simplifying security management, businesses can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their security posture. Symantec has operations in more than 40 countries, including R&D facilities, 24x7 Security Operations Centres and Security Response Labs around the world. At the heart of Symantec’s capabilities is the world’s leading scalable security infrastructure, the Symantec Global Intelligence Network.

sophos level 11, one elizabeth plaza north sydney nsw 2065

symantec level 14, 207 kent street sydney nsw 2000 Australia offices in Melbourne, canberra, Brisbane, perth, Auckland and Wellington

phone: +61 2 9409 9100 email: sales@sophos.com.au website: www.sophos.com.au

symantec’s market position • Endpoint Protection Platforms (#1 position in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 17 December 2010) • Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention (#1 position in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 2 June 2010) • Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (Positioned in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 13 May 2010) • Mobile Data Protection (Positioned in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 7 September 2010) • Secure Email Gateways (Positioned in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 27 April 2010) • MSSPs (Positioned in Leader’s Quadrant in Gartner Magic Quadrant, 29 November 2010)

phone:1800 000 423 (Australia) or 0800 697 962 (New Zealand) website:www.symantec.com W ho ’ S W ho o F FS i

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security

trend micro

trustDefender

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in internet content security and threat management, aims to create a world safe for the exchange of digital information for businesses and consumers. A pioneer in server-based antivirus with over 20 years’ experience, we deliver top-ranked security that fits our customers’ needs, stops new threats faster and protects data in physical, virtualised and cloud environments. Powered by the Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™ infrastructure, our industry leading cloud computing security technology and products stop threats where they emerge, on the internet, and are supported by 1,000+ threat intelligence experts around the globe.

TrustDefender is a leading innovator in integrated security and fraud risk management solutions. TrustDefender’s products increase the fraud detection and prevention capabilities for any online business, effectively providing a complete end-to-end solution to the two major scenarios that online businesses face: • Identity takeover – making sure confidential information is not compromised and stolen by cybercriminals • Making sure cybercriminals who have stolen credentials can’t do anything malicious with that information once they try to use it TrustDefender’s solutions integrate the end user and their computing device into the overall security chain and stops hidden malware that takes advantage of authenticated sessions from breaking into organisations, bank accounts and other online services and databases. TrustDefender allows secure transactions even on computers infected by known or unknown malware. We also give organisations unprecedented visibility into the security health status of all computers, smartphones, tablets and other internet-connected devices connecting to their network and online services, while delivering visibility into types of malware threats directing the attacks. When a potential problem is identified with a transaction, the instant decisioning process applies and lets the organisation make decisions in real-time based on this previously untapped information. TrustDefender’s third-generation security suite offers next generation technology for integrated fraud risk management in real time.

security solutions offered Trend Micro is advancing integrated threat management technology to protect operational continuity, personal information, and property from malware, spam, data leaks and the newest web threats. Depending on their size and requirements, customers can choose from a variety of solutions to meet their needs. Trend Micro has broadened its ability to safeguard against datastealing malware and inadvertent data leaks by delivering new data protection capabilities, including data leak prevention and encryption. With new server and application protection software for dynamic data centres, Trend Micro is also able to protect physical, virtual and cloud servers from malicious activity, offering the industry’s most comprehensive protection that is purpose built for the VMware platform. By tightly integrating with and leveraging VMware vSphere, ESX/ESXi and VMsafe APIs, Trend Micro VMsafe solutions and VMware-Ready Security Virtual Appliances allow enterprises to expand their virtualisation initiatives.

trend micro level 3, 2-4 lyon park road north ryde nsw 2113 phone: +61 2 9870 4888 fax: +61 2 9887 2511 website: www.trendmicro.com.au 138

Who ’S W h o oF FS i

trustDefender 15 whiting street Artarmon nsw 2064 phone: +61 2 9011 6516 fax: +61 2 9425 0099 email: sales-anz@trustdefender.com contact: Ted Egan, CEO & Co-Founder website: www.trustdefender.com

w ho’ s w ho Di r ec to ry

security

unifieD communicAtions

iBm Australia pty ltd

fujitsu

Today, money has been reduced to zeros and ones. It’s intangible and invisible. It’s information. Thankfully, intelligence is being infused into the way the world works, including our financial systems. Unprecedented computing power and advanced analytics can turn oceans of ones and zeros into insights, in real time, which means we can have a safer, more transparent and intelligent financial systems for a smarter planet. IBM is committed to the financial services industry and building a smarter planet. • Over 8,000 practitioners are fully-dedicated to the financial services industry across the globe • IBM client engagements include eight of the top 10 banks in the world, eight of the top 10 insurers in the world, and 13 of the top 15 financial markets firms in the world (as ranked by the Fortune Global 500) • IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBV) has 10 researchers/analysts to create thought leadership for banking, insurance and financial markets clients • A wide range of services specifically developed for the finance industry from information technology hardware, software and services; business consulting services; business transformation outsourcing; and IT financing

The financial services industry in Australia and New Zealand comprises more than 30 per cent of total private sector activity and underpins the economic growth of the broader community. Thankfully the shocks which have been created by the global financial crisis are abating and in our local markets we have a vibrant core comprising a number of large and well established players as well as some new and innovative entrants. Today there is significant opportunity to step out from the pack and differentiate in terms of customer experience and value. Whether you provide core retail banking services, wealth management or insurance offerings or niche services like investment banking, there are a significant opportunities to create additional shareholder value by providing the right services, delivered in the right way to the right customers. We call this our ‘customer-centric’ approach to financial services and this underpins everything Fujitsu does in the sector. Fujitsu provides a comprehensive suite of services and solutions, build around customer centricity, from superior customer insight through segmentation, to channel management, sales force effectiveness solutions, and into core business systems and processes. We also provide supporting applications and infrastructure services including secure desktop solutions, data centre processing and a range of products and services to enable you to create and deliver more agile services and products to your customers. We also believe that environmental sustainability is an essential pre-requisite for success and our solutions are of the highest environmental calibre.

iBm 601 pacific highway st leonards nsw 2065

fujitsu contact Details: www.fujitsu.com/au/contact/ website: www.fujitsu.com/au/solutions/industry-solutions/financial/ index.html

phone: 13 24 26 email: ibmfss@au1.ibm.com twitter: www.twitter.com/IBMFinanceAU website: http://www.ibm.com/financialservices/au W ho ’ S W ho o F FSi

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unifieD communicAtions

research in motion

telstra

Research In Motion (RIM), a global leader in wireless innovation, revolutionised the mobile industry with the introduction of the BlackBerry® solution in 1999. Today, BlackBerry products and services are used by millions of customers around the world to stay connected to the people and content that matter most throughout their day. Founded in 1984 and based in Waterloo, Ontario, RIM operates offices in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. RIM is listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market (NASDAQ: RIMM) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: RIM). The North Sydney offices serve as the Australia and New Zealand headquarters for RIM. The Sydney headquarters feature extensive training facilities, a research and development centre, strategic partner marketing centre and an enhanced technical support infrastructure.

research in motion website: www.rim.com or au.blackberry.com

telstra phone: 1300TELSTRA (1300 835 787) website: www.telstra.com.au 140

Who ’S Wh o oF FS i