Disruption moves at 'warp speed', CBA warns

Disruption in the financial services sector is happening at "warp speed" according to Commonwealth Bank group executive and chief information officer David Whiteing.

He said senior executives often struggled with the notion that something approved and funded just three and a half years earlier can already be obsolete. "If you get ten years you have done well," he said.

Speaking at an Australian Information Industry Association event in Sydney yesterday Whiteing offered evidence of the pace of change at CBA  - saying that 3.5 million of the bank's 11 million customers used online or mobile banking today, accounting for 46 per cent of all transactions.

"I expect that will grow by three million in the next 12 months…and by the time I'm finished in this job the majority of customers will have mobile as their preference," he said. Whiteing declined to speculate on the length of his term at the bank.

He did, however, acknowledge the perception that CBA is leading the technology race among Australia's four majors (though arguably Westpac is now nipping at its heels) noting: "today we are the tech team in banking with a technology halo. Tomorrow if we do this right we will be a technology business delivering banking services."

The bank is facing mounting competition from a raft of other technology businesses, with the so-called fintechs offering everything from alternative payment platforms to peer to peer lending services. Whiteing, however, said he did not spend much time worrying about upstart rivals.

"Disruptors are difficult to identify, they have a slow burn, then they beat you on the head," he said.

A better approach was to prime the bank's infrastructure and technology team to be able to rapidly respond to changing demands.

He told the audience of industry professionals that over the last two years, CBA's technology operations had been reformed into what is known as an Agile shop, using special "scrum" teams able to rapidly prototype and roll out new software.

Whiteing said that the bank now boasted 50 scrums and 850 people skilled in Agile, making it the largest Agile shop in the southern hemisphere.

"If you get the right people you create the future," he added.