Technology is one of the three pillars holding up the long term strategy of the Commonwealth Bank, according to the chief executive officer Ian Narev - and it, coupled with the productivity benefits that it underpins, means there's 'no need to send jobs overseas'.
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The CBA's core systems overhaul has been conducted in-house, and that focus on using home grown local skills will continue.
While Mr Narev acknowledged that he could see why some organisations would offshore he said that his experience with offshoring in the past was that there were often disappointments in terms of the labour arbitrage and service levels which were achieved, and that although the bank would always look at it, there were no plans to offshore any operations at this time.
Mr Narev said CBA would continue to look to technology, its people (and their productivity), and a strong balance sheet as the three pillars underpinning future strategy.
The bank has always claimed that its $1.1 billion core banking programme, overseen by CIO Michael Harte, which has seen it replace legacy with an SAP based platform would give it a competitive edge. Mr Narev today said that although other Australian banks could offer some of the real time banking functions in pockets (St George for example has long offered real time banking), he argued that none of CBA's competitors could offer real time banking across all their lines of business.
More than 10 million retail bank accounts have now been transitioned to the new CBA platform as well as all but a few businesses. He expected that transition would be complete by August or September.
