NAB chief technology and operations officer Patrick Wright says the new strategy was a signpost that the bank’s transition to public cloud had been successful, and while this work would continue, it was now able to look beyond that herculean task.

“The new eight-pillar technology strategy replaces one that the bank has been working under since September 2018.” said Wright.

“It’s been a huge cornerstone in delivering resilience and capability to our business,” he said

The bank reversed a decades-old policy to outsource work, and went on a hiring spree, taking on thousands of new staff to bring digital capability back in-house, as part of the transition over the last four years.

NAB bank has significantly reduced its reliance on outside workers, dropping from 70 percent to 20 percent in five years.

In July 2020, the bank said it was undertaking a world-leading project with Microsoft Azure to transition 1000 applications to the public cloud in 1000 days.

Despite missing its “app a day” target, the bank has taken significant strides in shifting its technology stack to the cloud, with 70% of applications currently operating in the cloud. According to Mr Wright, this resulted in an 86% decline in high and critical risk incidents.

‘NAB’s tech team had committed to the board to continue reducing these incidents by 15 per cent each year.’ said Wright.

“In the world of technology, especially in large companies, we run incredibly complex environments that slow us down, but also prevent us from automation to go faster,”.

“We’re very focused on simplifying as much as we can, all the way down to how we configure our servers, networks and computers.” said Wright