The CIO Show: Digitising financial services in Australia

They say every organisation is a technology company these days, and this is especially the case for businesses in the Australian financial services sector. In this our third industry verticals special, we talk to three finance tech experts about how the industry is progressing on its digital transformation journey.

Chris Bell, a veteran banking tech leader, now regional VP executive programs with Gartner, shares his experiences and perspectives on how banks are dealing with the pressure to move away from their legacy systems to more integrated, data driven systems capable of supporting current demands for true customer centricity.

He also ponders the extent to which banks are being spooked into action by the sudden rise of competing fintechs, whether there’s a trend emerging amongst banks hiring ‘data managers’ from big tech, and what that might mean for CIOs.

Andrew Walker, a banking sector veteran who is now CEO at fintech Nano Home Loans, explains how his experiences in senior technology and business roles with Westpac and others inspired him to launch his own startup.

Walker pulls no punches in assessing the true state of digital transformation amongst banks and other established finance firms, while providing a fascinating insight into how he and his team actually built their fintech.

And one of our favourite tech industry scholars, Deloitte Asia Pacific's chief transformation officer , Rob Hillard, returns to talk about how the pressure now on banks to become more like technology companies.

He says that this has created something of an identity crisis for banks that they will experience for some time yet as they continue wrestling with legacy systems and the threat of more agile fintechs looking for a piece of the action.