Client Synopsis
ME BankOrganisation Overview
ME Bank (the Bank) was created in 1999, although its origins date back to September 1994 when, as an initiative of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), National Mutual launched Super Member Home Loans. The Bank was subsequently created with the support of industry super funds which are its current owners.
The Bank’s goal is to give industry super fund members better value banking and customer service with a simplified approach to banking and with products that are straightforward with low or no fees, low interest rates and higher returns.
By leveraging its ownership structure, the Bank has also become a leader in Australia in its pursuit of workplace banking by providing services to its customers directly in their work place.
Fragile to Agile Engagement
The CEO of the Bank held the same position at Adelaide Bank at the time of its merger with Bendigo Bank. Shortly after joining ME Bank, he requested Fragile to Agile to assess the ability of the Bank’s existing technology to support its business strategy and growth aspirations.
Following the same business driven approach employed at Adelaide Bank, Fragile to Agile designed a transformation program to revitalise and position the Bank’s technology to support its aggressive growth strategy. Based on our time and cost estimates, the program was approved by the Bank’s executive and board in June 2010. Under Fragile to Agile’s architecture and program oversight and using its conceptual design process, the entire program was completed in 2015 with less than 2% variance in time and 10% in budget.
Just some of the facts about the transformation program, and the benefits realised by ME from this work include:
- Over 95% of all deposit account opening processes are now straight through processed
- Improvement in end to end Home Loan Mortgage process:
- Improved conditional approval rates; from 4 – 10 days to 50% having an instant decision
- Letter of Offer generation from 3 hours to seconds
- 75% reduction in data rekeying
- 50% of the Bank’s home loans are now conditionally approved by the system (from zero per cent before the Program) and the time it takes to get this approval has been cut from 3 days to 3 minutes.
- An uplift in time to market for new products, what was taking 12 months now takes 3 months
- Break down of the communication barriers between business and ICT
For more information, please see the CRN article on the ME Bank Transformation Program and our involvement.
We are proud to have won two awards for our work on the ME bank program. In 2015 Fragile to Agile won the Australasian Award for Excellence in Enterprise Architecture for our work on the ME Bank Transformation Program. Submissions were evaluated by an independent committee consisting of representatives from the Australian Computer Society (ACS), Association of Enterprise Architects (AEA), International Association of IT Architects (IASA) and the Institute of IT Professionals New Zealand (IITP). In 2016, Fragile to Agile also won the iCMG International award for excellence in EA, in the category of Customer Driven Business Transformations, for its’ work on the program.
Finally, we continue to provide ongoing enterprise and solution architecture services to ME Bank assisting in developing and executing their next five-year plan to leverage and enhance the new agile technology foundations delivered by the transformation program.