Bendigo Bank rebuilds digital banking on Google Cloud

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has rebuilt its digital banking system on Google Cloud, paving the way for a more robust and personalised customer experience and faster, more reliable rollout of new features.

Since moving to Google Cloud in May 2023, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s new, fully automated, consumer-facing digital banking application has delivered substantial boosts to performance, reducing deployment times for customer experience upgrades to just 15 minutes and achieving 99.9% availability across its underlying cloud infrastructure.

With Google Kubernetes Engine, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank can now scale down digital banking workload in off-peak periods to reduce cost and environmental footprint, and dynamically scale up to meet growing customer needs and demands on systems during peak usage times — reducing time from ideation to production and delivering customers greater reliability and confidence.

The migration to Google Cloud, supported by implementation partner Cognizant, is a key component of the bank’s wider transformation program to drive simplification, modernisation and consolidation through streamlined service offerings. It also brings Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s digital banking app onto the same infrastructure as Up, Bendigo Bank’s next-generation digital bank.

“As the most trusted bank, this milestone is a critical enabler in helping Bendigo and Adelaide Bank deliver a better digital banking experience and meet growing customer preferences to interact with us digitally,” said Andrew Cresp, Chief Information Officer at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank.

“With this foundational work with Google Cloud now complete, we’re able to respond to customer needs faster.”

Lightning-fast transformation sets the stage for personalisation at scale

As part of the digital upgrade, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has also now migrated 33% of its applications to the cloud, minimising interruptions to customer experience, while simultaneously meeting compliance requirements for moving highly sensitive data to the cloud.

Deployment of the bank’s entire digital banking application stack, culminating in a narrow, six-hour implementation window, was supported by thousands of hours of preparation by Bendigo and Adelaide Bank employees — with support and training from Google Cloud’s Learning and Enablement team.

“Google Cloud has a deep understanding of the Australian financial services industry and the regulatory environment in which we operate. That, alongside the invaluable training and certification support we received and Google’s approach to security and customer data protection, has made them a great fit for Bendigo Bank since 2018,” Cresp said.

“Their expert guidance has added significant value that will deliver dividends well beyond this stage of our digital transformation.”

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank will also apply BigQuery and AI platform Vertex AI to its recently released open data ‘lakehouse’, helping simplify its customer data management, which will enable even more customisation and personalisation for customers.

“Modernising one of Australia’s largest retail banks takes long-term commitment and vision,” said Alister Dias, Vice President of Google Cloud Australia & New Zealand.

“Building its digital banking system on Google Cloud enables Bendigo and Adelaide Bank to not just radically strengthen its customer value proposition at scale, but also take even bolder steps into digital experiences with confidence.”

The deployment marks the latest stage in the bank’s ongoing cloud and data transformation journey with Google Cloud, as it moves towards having 50% of its business in the cloud by FY24.

Image credit: iStock.com/NilsBV