Modernising Australian banking: Balancing innovation, compliance and customer experience

From everyday transactions to mortgage applications, most interactions with banks now happen entirely online. Australians have embraced this shift more than any other market, with more than 99% of customer-bank interactions now digital, far exceeding the 76% global average.

But this transformation has brought new pressures. In a highly regulated, high-stakes environment, success belongs to the banks that can modernise at pace, while staying secure, resilient, compliant and customer-focused. 

Australia’s evolving banking sector

From the 1983 decision to float the Australian dollar, opening the door to global banking competition, to the big banks rapidly adopting AI today, Australia has always been at the forefront of financial innovation, embracing the challenges and opportunities it brings. 

Leading banks and financial institutions continue to turn to technology to stay ahead, with tech spending rising by 15.2% to $8.9 billion in 2024. While the “Big 4” banks still dominate, they now face stiff competition from more than 800 fintechs and digital-native banking competitors. These disruptors are redefining customer expectations, forcing traditional players to continuously evolve, move faster and deliver seamless digital experiences. 

Australia is also no stranger to frequently changing regulations, constantly forcing financial institutions to rethink how they manage data, ensure system resilience, counter cybercrime and build customer trust. Just last month, new operational risk management rules came into effect from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), requiring banks to improve operational risk controls, incident response and accountability around risk with technology and service delivery.  Financial institutions must also comply with the Consumer Data Right (CDR), which enables Australian households and businesses to access their data held by their bank through innovative new products, allowing them to make informed choices, switch providers, and more easily apply for products and services. 

While Australia’s banking and financial sector may face some uniquely local pressures, organisations looking to utilise technology as a solution can draw on lessons and patterns from around the world.

Seven challenges facing financial tech leaders

Technology leaders in Australia’s banking and finance sector face strikingly similar challenges to their counterparts around the world.

• Modernising legacy systems: Outdated tech can’t provide the speed, resilience or security that modern banking requires. 58% of global executives in 2024 admitted that flaws in their foundational enterprise IT systems disrupt business-as-usual on a weekly basis. 
• Building scalable, modular, and future-proof architectures: Modern architecture approaches involve modular blocks for specific aspects of the digital ecosystem, such as data management or security, combined in a cohesive framework. This approach enables incremental updates, continuous improvement and greater agility to evolving market demands and customer expectations.
• Build vs buy decisions: Financial organisations are often faced with complex choices when it comes to which software to build themselves internally and what is already available on the market for purchase. Identifying the right build vs. buy choice can avoid wasting cost, time and opportunity.
• Rising customer expectations: Customers in Australia are demanding more from their banks, with Forrester data finding 73% of online adults believing they should be able to accomplish any financial task through a mobile app. Organisations that don’t provide seamless, engaging and personalised digital experiences risk losing business to more technologically focused rivals. 
• Cybersecurity poses a substantial risk: 92% of Australians say data security, privacy and fraud prevention are important to them when selecting a bank. According to the IMF, cyberattacks have almost doubled, with nearly one-fifth of all incidents affecting financial firms. Australia is no stranger to cybersecurity incidents, with the superannuation industry recently targeted. 
• Meeting complex regulatory requirements: With responsibility for the financial assets of individuals, families and businesses, banking organisations are required to demonstrate they meet various complex regulatory requirements, which are often evolving and changing. Organisations need to be able to adapt to meet these requirements and innovate in a way that maintains compliance. 
• Embracing AI and emerging technologies: AI offers opportunities to enhance operational efficiency, automate operations, and support smarter decision-making. But for AI to be effective in banking, it needs strong foundations in data, human oversight and robust governance.

Why banking and financial institutions choose Equal Experts for digital transformation

With more than 4,000 consultants across Australia, the UK, Europe, North America, India, and South Africa, we have extensive global experience across financial services. We’ve supported everyone from large, multi-national banks and payment solution companies to fintech innovators and bespoke insurance providers to deliver transformational change.

Our pragmatic, risk-aware approach helps financial services leaders across the world innovate with confidence. With 90% of our consultants bringing over a decade of technology experience, we have the highest concentration of senior technology talent in the world. Our smaller, expert teams integrate seamlessly into organisations, delivering value fast while building in-house expertise to sustain innovation in the long term.

Our work allows organisations to thrive by embracing and integrating new emerging technologies, enhancing system efficiencies, modernising legacy applications and meeting rising customer expectations. We do this while navigating the intersection of compliance, risk and regulation to drive sustainable growth and success, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.

Innovation in banking and financial services – what success looks like 

Building a neobank from scratch

We partnered with Xinja at the start of its journey, helping the neobank achieve something that no other bank was doing at the time – launching a prepaid card product with zero fees on foreign transactions. Through inception workshops, user research, rapid solution design and prototyping, our lean and iterative delivery approach led to a highly customer-centric and technically feasible product in just six months. Read the Xinja case study.

Spirit Super’s 12-week digital transformation

We helped superannuation fund Spirit Super to build the foundations for the next generation of its technology, including the launch of its first cloud-based event-driven microservice – a third-party member registration service which reduced integration time from eight weeks to two days. Read the Spirit Super case study

Breaking down a data pipeline monolith to improve security

For a global financial services provider, spotting and resolving security vulnerabilities was challenging, time-consuming and risky due to its tightly coupled, monolithic data pipeline system. We introduced the concept of “pipelines as products,” breaking down the monolith into modular components that could be changed independently and safely. This reduced deployment risk, significantly improved code quality, and reduced rollbacks from 80% to nearly zero, while also upskilling the client’s internal teams in data strategy and QA best practices. Read the case study.

Empowering IG Group’s product development teams to become transformation drivers

IG Group‘s product development teams were hindered by fragmented processes, lengthy deployment times, and low test coverage. We worked with the global leader in online trading and investments, providing hands-on knowledge transfer and implementation guidance.  By addressing CI/CD pipelines, test automation, vulnerability checking, reusability and scenario coverage, Equal Experts helped reduce change failure from 33% to zero and increase deployment frequency to daily, up from once every two months.  Read the IG Group case study.

Enhancing customer experience and automating fraud detection for a leading payment platform

Equal Experts helped the Middle East’s leading payment provider adopt event-driven architecture to seamlessly handle complex payment journeys for retail merchants. The platform provides secure, fast and reliable payments, protects against fraudulent payments, and offers a seamless experience for both merchants and customers alike. Read the case study.

Streamlining feature delivery in identity verification 

A fast-scaling fintech needed to improve internal delivery processes for its critical identity verification product. We helped our client establish a streamlined approach to feature delivery that improved quality, ensured compliance and enhanced the experience of their customers, enabling them to continue to scale the business with confidence. Read the case study,

Speak to the digital transformation experts

With Australia’s innovative mindset, it’s no surprise that banks and financial services organisations are accelerating technology transformations and adopting emerging technologies at pace. But in this fast-moving, high-stakes environment, success depends on more than just tech. It demands clear business value, from delivery efficiency to improved customer experience and cost savings.

Equal Experts brings the experience, pragmatism and technical depth needed to help Australia’s banks turn complex transformation into lasting business value. Contact us today to find out how we can help your organisation unlock real value from technology.