In an update to the market on its technological upgrade program Unite, Westpac chief executive Anthony Miller said its “one commercial bank” project would simplify its banking technology, including the decommissioning of its Hogan system and other legacy systems.
“As part of this migration commercial business banking customers and employees from St George, BankSA and Bank of Melbourne will transition to a consistent banking experience and single brand under Westpac,” Miller said.
“These businesses will have access to better digital capabilities and a broader range of products and services, including real time payments, flexible merchant solutions and our market leading banking app.”
The “one commercial bank” plans include migrating over 75,000 commercial customer accounts to Westpac and is expected to cost around $230 million and add $40 million of annual benefits in FY28.
The bank also flagged it invested $195 million in the first quarter for Unite, which put it on track to meet spend guidance of $850 million to $950 million.
“We expect Unite to represent approximately 40% of annual investment spend in FY27-FY28 before stepping down at FY29,” Miller said.
As part of Unite, there are 57 initiatives of which eight have now been completed. It has introduced a traffic light system for its initiatives with 38 rated green, seven amber, and one red.
The red initiative is its debit car simplification project. The bank said this project had faced some unforeseen challenges but it has “clear actions to get its progress back on track”.
Unite completed its migration of wealth customers to BT Panorama this month and now has over 300,000 accounts and more than $150 billion in funds under administration.
Westpac’s 2H26 key milestones include:
- Mortgage simplification changes including transferring Westpac mortgage property security data to the target state master and enabling an SMSF product on Westpac mortgage ledger;
- Updates to its digital banker platform;
- Migrating personal loans and regional brand credit cards to the AssistNow platform;
- Debit card simplification initiatives; and
- One commercial bank.
The bank also expects to complete its “one business deposit ledger” migration under Unite by 1H28.