Mediaboss Marketing

Experimental approach to app development... Westpac CIO Clive Whincup.

A little more like Google, a little less like a bank, say chiefs.

Despite cutting several hundred jobs and being accused of planning to offshore the majority of its IT operation, Westpac technology chiefs say the development of new mobile applications and innovative solutions for the banking group must be handled in-house.

Chief information officer Clive Whincup and chief technology officer Jeff Jacobs used a technology media briefing last week in Sydney to unveil two new iPad apps developed in Australia by a team of about 50 staff. The team, comprised primarily of former St George Bank developers and additional personnel, bases app features on insights garnered from consumer and user behavioural research.

The Broker App is to be used by mortgage brokers to evaluate customer's eligibility for loans and to calculate repayments, while Tabula is exclusively for the use of board members now that the banking group no longer issues paper documents ahead of board meetings.

Advertisement: Story continues below

Westpac chief technology officer Jeff Jacobs.

"We've grown the team quite rapidly with our own staff. We're not relying on contractors. We think a lot of the innovation comes from the intimacy between the developer and the business community and the customer workshops we run. You can't get that when you ship (a brief) overseas," he said.

Westpac axed around 150 IT jobs in January and March, after sending roles offshore. According to the Finance Sector Union, since 2007, more than 6200 jobs have been relocated offshore by Australian banks and financial companies.

But only last week, Westpac-owned St George reneged on a plan to outsource another 200 IT jobs to IBM, the leading outsourcing vendor in Australia, according to Gartner.

Original post:
Westpac to develop technology in-house