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CBA tips $150m into core banking

Commonwealth Bank of Australia has topped up its core banking war chest with a further $150 million aimed at bulking up analytical, risk and financial management systems, as well as extending its new platform to subsidiaries.
Written by Renai LeMay, Contributor

Commonwealth Bank of Australia has topped up its core banking war chest with a further $150 million aimed at bulking up analytical, risk and financial management systems, as well as extending its new platform to subsidiaries.

The bank's chief executive Ralph Norris confirmed the additional funding this afternoon in a media briefing. The additional amount will boost the total budget for the SAP and Accenture-led project to $730 million.

"The $150 million is about making sure that we're able to obviously cater for [Auckland Savings Bank] and Bankwest," he said in response to a question from ZDNet.com.au. "Plus it also covers a wide range of extensions that we're making to the project, from the point of view of subsidiary systems in and around risk and financial management systems."

"Because this system changes our structure from an account-based structure to a customer-based structure. So we've decided that there are some really significant benefits for us analytically to go through and change a number of systems that originally we weren't going to do."

Norris claimed the bank was already getting benefits from the system, which it was running live alongside its legacy platform. It has launched three new financial products on the new system; a first home saver product, a new term deposit and another savings initiative.

He maintained the overall project was on schedule and the bank was confident that it would complete the core migration within its four-year time frame. The project was initiated in April 2008.

"We are on schedule, and even with the changes that we're suggesting that will provide us with additional analytical capability and finance and risk for the Commonwealth Bank, we are confident that we will complete the migration within the four-year time frame that we initially announced," Norris said.

The news came as CBA also today revealed it had initiated a review of major IT licensing contracts held by Bankwest as it took the first steps into integrating the technology systems of its new subsidiary. The bank's overall IT spend was flat.

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