IBS Journal October 2015
Westpac set to fund technology overhaul with AU$1.3bn investment
Australian bank Westpac will be increasing its annual spend to AU$1.3 billion ($910 million) as it looks to fund a long-term technology overhaul. Whilst other major Australian banks –
like National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Suncorp – have invest- ed billions of dollars and years of work into their core banking conversions, Westpac has traditionally resisted change. Now CEO Brian Harzter has said that the bank is increasing its spend to ‘propel’ Westpac towards becoming ‘one of the world’s great service companies’. Westpac, he says, will be investing heavily in digital technologies in four key areas: customer experience, operational efficiency, com- mon platforms and infrastructure and ‘dig- ital readiness’. Westpac started moving to CSC Cel-
reriti, a Java-wrapped version of its legacy core system, Hogan, in the first half of 2015 (despite committing to it back in 2010). A new set of APIs bolted onto the new sys- tem will, according to Hartzer, enable it to interact with almost any digital application. Hartzer and Westpac are calling the
new platform a ‘customer service hub’ and hope that it will provide a single operating system across investments, superannuation and self-managed super funds. On top of
this, the system is expected to allow West- pac to centralise data and eliminate frag- mented and duplicated records. As for CSC, it has recently unveiled yet
another Hogan/Celeriti related initiative in hope to revive its fortunes, a joint venture with HCL.
Alex Hamilton
Westpac HQ, Sydney © Merbabu, Wikipedia
Visa given AU$18m slap on the wrist by Australian competition watch dog
Visa has been hit with an AU$18 million ($12 million) collective fine for program- ming its terminals to lock out rival currency conversion services. Australia’s competition watchdog, the
ACCC, filed the case after a 2010 regulation change by Visa prohibited the use of rival services on POS transactions at its termi- nals. The ACCC says that the ruling and the subsequent fine should be a ‘clarion call’ to multi-national companies that plan to cir-
cumvent Australia’s competition laws. Dynamic currency conversion, which is
provided by companies like Travelex, allows international travellers to pay for transac- tions in their home currency, effectively lock- ing in the exchange rate. It’s a direct compet- itor of Visa’s own conversion service, which pays merchants in their local currency and bills the cardholder in their home currency. Despite the fact that Visa made $330m in revenue in Australia last year, ACCC
© IBS Intelligence 2015
chief Rod Simms believes that the fine will definitely send a ‘strong signal’ across the globe. Visa has said that it is pleased to have settled the case and that there will be no other drastic changes to Visa’s practices as a result of the action. The court also ruled that Visa has to
pay the AU$2million ($1.4 million) in costs that the ACCC racked up in bringing the case to trial.
Alex Hamilton
www.ibsintelligence.com 29
news: aus/nz round-up
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