The National Australia Bank (NAB) has signed agreements with two global financial institutions — Israel’s Bank Leumi and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) — to form an international banking innovation alliance.
The NAB says the alliance, announced on Thursday, will enable the sharing of information and innovation strategies and open up networks with start-up partners, “with the potential for the group to co-develop products and services to enhance customer experiences”.
NAB executive general manager NAB Labs, Jonathan Davey, who is in Tel Aviv meeting the alliance leads from Bank Leumi and CIBC, said the network opened up many opportunities for NAB to access “first-class international innovation initiatives and insights”.
“Our customers want us to do things differently and strategic partnerships like this allow us to access ideas, talent and capabilities of like-minded organisations, in this case the opportunity to tap into two leading international banks, to help us gain world-class insights from global leaders to benefit our customers,” Davey says.
{loadposition peter}“We want to bring the best solutions from around the world to our customers and this alliance helps us to do that. We see this as an opportunity to jointly develop solutions to problems that are common to our respective customers, leveraging the diverse capabilities that we each bring to the table.
“We’re competing in a rapidly changing world. Everyday new fintechs are challenging the status-quo; we have to not just keep up, but also find ways to get in front. By combining global knowledge and insights we hope to be able to accelerate learning and the development of solutions for our customers,” Davey says.
NAB has already partnered with CIBC in using Ripple’s blockchain technology to complete international payments transfers between the two banks as a proof of concept.
Davey says the NAB believes that the blockchain technology has the “potential to not only deliver real time international payments, but also improved security and efficiency of our payments systems, so this is an important piece of work”.
“Bank Leumi is recognised as the most innovative bank in Israel and is the bank of choice for Israel’s world leading start-up ecosystem. We believe that our alliance with Bank Leumi will enable us to access leading Israeli technologies, in particular access to leading cyber security and data analytics capabilities.
“Like NAB, Bank Leumi is the largest SME business bank in its market, so we also see a natural alignment there to work on more innovative solutions to our respective small and medium business customers.”
Bank Leumi first executive vice-president, group chief technology information officer and chief operating officer, Dan Yerushalmi says, “Bank Leumi is a key player in both the local and global innovation arena and I am strongly convinced that this alliance will enable us to mutually share innovation strategies and to enhance our respective customer experience”.
CIBC executive vice-president and chief commercial officer, Stephen Forbes, says CIBC has created “a culture of collaboration among teams to drive innovation inside our bank, and formed important external partnerships with innovation hubs and fintechs to help us build the bank of the future for our clients”.