ANZ is about to start a "massive core banking program" according to Cyrus Daruwala, managing director of IDC Financial Insights Asia-Pacific.Speaking yesterday at the launch of IDC's 2013 Banking Outlook Daruwala said that the ANZ's Hogan core banking platform was "desperately" in need of an overhaul.IDC Financial Insights works closely with the region's leading banks on their IT sourcing strategies, and prides itself on its insights about trends in the sector.Daruwala's prediction however remains at odds with the ANZ's public position that its current core banking platform is adequate as it continues to pursue a super-regional strategy.The ANZ yesterday declined to comment on what it termed "industry speculation" adding that it had no relationship with IDC Financial Insights.Having updated its Hogan core banking platform in Australia in the 1990s, and rolled out a new Infosys Finacle platform across much of Asia, ANZ has always maintained it has no need to spend billions of dollars on a core system upgrade as rivals Commonwealth Bank, NAB and to a lesser extent Westpac have or are doing.But according to Daruwala, while ANZ's super regional strategy has allowed it to "bifurcate the core" - effectively running multiple separate systems in different countries before reconciling the data onto the Hogan system, ANZ was now "desperately up for a change in the next few years."IDC yesterday also forecast that in the next year IT spending by Australia's banks and insurance companies would rise 6.8 per cent to $10 billion, with a further $3 billion of spending earmarked for consumer facing technical innovation. While impressive, that growth is more modest than the 8.8 per cent predicted for banks across the Asia Pacific region.