point of view: nationwide
IBS Journal September 2015
Life after go-live
The core banking project ‘is not the end, it is the start’, according to Nationwide Building Society’s Carlo Mascia, banking development lead for the IT and security group. Having gone through a long and painful implementation, there has been no time to sit still, with plenty more to do since then.
The core banking system transformation at the UK’s largest building society, Nationwide, has been one of the sector’s most notable of the last few years. It was over-budget and over-ran, with many challenges along the way, but the society persevered and succeeded in the end. Here was a prime case where it would have been easy to decide that all of the hard work had been done and it was time for a rest. ‘Core banking is not the end, it is the
start,’ says Carlo Mascia, banking devel- opment centre lead for the Nationwide’s IT services and security group. First, there was the need to now fully utilise the plat- form to gain the business benefits. Second, additional upgrades and enhancements still constitute large projects in their own
right, with the propensity to go wrong – as was demonstrated in July 2014 when an upgrade caused a high-profile outage. The cutover to the SAP core system had been done on a phased basis. Nation- wide’s main current account, the FlexAc- count, went live in November 2012, solely for new accounts, so too its FlexDirect online and phone account. Its FlexPlus premium account went live in February 2013 and Flex- One (for under 18s) in October 2014. The society’s back book of five million
accounts was migrated from the legacy Unisys platform in March 2014. In parallel, the society was one of the beneficiaries of the financial crisis, with a steep increase in business, including for current accounts, with a rise from a 6.1 per cent market share to 6.8, alongside the current 13.4 per cent share of the mortgage market and 12 per cent share of the savings market. In its most recent financial year, it saw a 54 per cent increase in profits to £1044 million. It has £195 billion in assets and 700 branches. Two of the key initial aims of the pro-
ject have been achieved, says Mascia. These were to build more flexible cur- rent accounts and bring products to mar- ket faster. The fact that Nationwide has launched four new current accounts in the last three years shows the power of the SAP platform, he says. The same will be done for savings, with the aim being to bring new products to market here within five days, which will allow much greater flexibility for the society’s savings portfolio.
48 © IBS Intelligence 2015
www.ibsintelligence.com Nationwide HQ, Swindon
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