Modernising mindset on path to digital transformation

National Australia Bank

Steve Day, NAB Chief Technology Officer interview with MIT Technology Review

Over the past few years, NAB has undergone a significant technology journey, modernising internal technical skills, insourcing capabilities and accelerating a culture and mindset towards a successful public cloud first adoption strategy to help strengthen the bank’s technology foundations.

Steve Day, NAB’s Chief Technology Officer sat down with MIT Technology Review to discuss how the bank embraced a culture change that has resulted in a number of key achievements. Since 2018, NAB has migrated around 60 percent of its applications to the cloud and is on track to meet its target of 80 percent in 2023.

NAB has also seen a 30 percent improvement in technology productivity and a significant reduction in critical incidents, largely due to bringing around 69 percent of its tech workforce in-house, up from about 30 percent just four years ago.

The bank has also focused on building a series of tech guilds to help train and develop thousands of its engineers.

“We built a cloud guild, a data guild, an insourcing framework. We built our NAB Engineering Foundation and with a goal of building a culture of innovation of cloud, of agile, and being able to deliver great products and services to our customers in a cost effective, but very safe way. And as part of that, we started on our cloud migrations and that is really moving at pace now,” Steve said.

NAB is building its tech capabilities further with an aim to hire 1, 500 specialists this year alone, and doubling its tech intern program to over 500 interns. Underscoring the bank’s tech talent drive and focus on building strong technology foundations is getting the basics right, and a fundamental commitment to delivering seamless digital customer experiences.

Hear more from Steve Day in his interview with MIT here: Embracing culture change on the path to digital transformation | MIT Technology Review.

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