NAB's UBank to 'use technology as a weapon'

National Australia Bank says its digital bank UBank will take advantage of the government’s ‘open banking’ reforms by developing new ‘platforms’ that will connect users to a broad range of financial services – not necessarily NAB’s – which could open up new revenue streams.

NAB chief executive Andrew Thorburn described the open data reforms as “potentially a transformational-type change” and said in an interview NAB is planning to “use technology as a weapon, not just a tool of commerce”.

NAB created UBank a decade ago; its customer base has grown to 400,000, half are Millennials, and only a small minority are existing NAB customers.

NAB is lifting investment in UBank this year, in part to fend off a new breed of start-up banks expected to enter the market after the government called on APRA to make changes to the bank licensing regime.

“We are the only bank in this country to have built a digital attacker to go after itself,” said UBank CEO Lee Hatton. “But we are not trying to build a digital NAB. We are building a very different competitor.”

Ms Hatton pointed to UBank’s ‘Free2Spend’ platform as an example of experimentation around data aggregation. Under open banking, she said personal financial management and information services could replace transaction accounts as the core point of customer contact.

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Source: NAB’s UBank to ‘use technology as a weapon’ | afr.com