Leading digital banks in Australia are setting a good example for other banks. Source: Shutterstock.

Leading digital banks in Australia are setting a good example for other banks. Source: Shutterstock.

Australia explores how banks can effectively achieve digital excellence

AUSTRALIA is waking up need to go digital in order to stay relevant. The country’s banks, especially, have under intense pressure to embrace technology in a bid to delight customers and boost efficiencies.

Further, open banking and other regulations coupled with the demand from customers for digital-first services and a real need for better data protection, privacy, and security have caused banks to accelerate their journey to digital.

As a result, many of the traditional banks are adopting a digital-first mindset, embracing the transformation, and tailoring their investments to achieve new, digital-worthy milestones.

Although the understanding around technology is common among bankers, not all Australian banks are at the same stage of digital maturity — some are holding out because they simply lack the resources.

However, to truly be a digital bank, it takes more than just an investment in cutting-edge solutions.

From the infrastructure to organizational management and work culture, banks need wholesale reforms across the organization. In order to achieve digital excellence effectively and seamlessly, chasing a set of goals can help.

To begin with, banks must aim to migrate their system to the public cloud. This is a crucial move as legacy systems are no longer able to support the development of new-age service applications that holds the organization back.

Banks should shift their focus towards deploying progressive and scalable solutions that add value to data management, data analysis, and touchpoint developments and the overall quality of the infrastructure.

The public cloud enables banks to accelerate their journey to digital. Banks concerned about the security of public cloud deployments need only remember to adopt best practices and pay attention to the migration process to safeguard their data.

Moving on, there is also a need to elevate the work culture in an organization and identify and employ the right skill to fuel the organization’s digital transformation.

Further, all members of the organization, from C-suite executives to the new recruits, must be able to embrace digital and try to expand digital literacy within their roles.

Some leading digital banks in Australia are so comfortable and proficient in digitalization that they do not need a Chief Digital Officer to chart their transformation efforts. Instead, managers and employees drive the move to digital, progressively.

Finally, going digital doesn’t mean banks need to become technology companies. Instead, they need to learn to work with fintech companies to deploy new-age solutions. Thankfully, in Australia, beyond the ‘trial and error’ phase, banks are now more assertive and bold with their investment and deployment of fintech.

Although going digital is not a race, banks must realize that what sets them apart from the rest in the market is digital excellence.