Andrew Thorburn explains the fintech forces reshaping NAB

The emergence of fintech has fundamentally changed National Australia Bank’s strategy and the thinking of its chief executive, Andrew Thorburn.

He’s deploying more start-up lingo, and said last week the nation’s largest business lender is no longer benchmarking its performance against its rival banks, but rather technology players.

Thorburn and his newish tech chief, Patrick Wright, who was previously with Barclays in the United States, went to Seattle and Silicon Valley last month and met with Amazon, Microsoft and Google for some inspiration.

Like the tech giants themselves, NAB is pumping up technology spending with sums that would make wannabe disrupters salivate.

With a plethora of start-ups nipping at NAB’s heels to offer online loans to businesses – the growing list includes Prospa, Moula, Kikka, OnDeck, Spotcap, Get Capital, CreditSME, Banjo, Sail, Apositive, RateSetter, Bigstone, ThinCats, InvoiceX, Waddle, FundX and Timelio – NAB is investing an additional $1.5 billion over the next three years on technology to sharpen up its digital offering.

This is on top of the $3 billion already earmarked for the same period.

Source: Andrew Thorburn explains the fintech forces reshaping NAB | afr.com