Published : 1 month ago, on 04/11/2024

Majid Muhammad, Chief Information Officer, Resimac

Majid Muhammad, Chief Information Officer, Resimac and Theo Albers, Regional Head for ANZ, Infosys Finacle, discuss the trends, diversity of the ANZ banking sector, how technology frontrunners have pulled ahead, the importance of a learning organisation, the foundations required to succeed with cloud and AI, and how the support of a partner is critical in large-scale change management programs. Resimac recently completed a technology modernization program encompassing their core systems and digital engagement channels, including internet and mobile, on a SaaS platform.

Theo: Welcome Majid and thank you for joining me today. Before we start, can you, just for our global audience, introduce Resimac and your role within the company?

Majid: Thank you for inviting me, Theo. Resimac is a non-bank financial institution focused on the mortgage sector. We recently expanded into asset finance as well. Resimac has direct-to-customer brands like homeloans.com.au, but we also have a network of over 12,000 brokers through which we distribute our products and services. 

Resimac has assets under management in excess of $13 billion and we are listed on the ASX. As CIO, I look after the technology function, but I also have within my remit, customer care, the contact center, and the related operations within Resimac as well.

Theo Albers, Regional Head for ANZ, Infosys Finacle

Theo: Thank you, Majid, for that introduction. What in your view are the key technology trends and opportunities driving change in the ANZ banking sector and how are financial institutions in the region positioned in their digital journeys to take advantage?

Majid: Post-COVID, the ANZ banking sector has seen a mix of recovery and challenges, especially intense competition leading to margin compression. As a mature industry, true disruptive innovation evolves slowly — in the last few decades we saw this in the form of ATMs, internet banking and mobile apps, more recently it is digital wallets, and new payment methods. Major drivers of gradual change include government regulation, security compliance, and technology adoption. 

Recently, we’ve seen the introduction of business process management, customer relationship management platforms, and process optimization trends. Organisation’s that adopt every new capability may see small incremental differences, but over time, this has positioned frontrunners differently from those that have ducked every trend.

The industry’s maturity drives interesting trends, allowing consistent adopters of technology to be frontrunners, while also allowing those that haven’t adopted technology to exist in the industry. That’s what brings a lot of diversity to the industry.

Theo: Agreed and I think one of the factors that you mentioned and is so often overlooked is the incremental change being brought in by businesses. Always, it’s the big-ticket items and large transformations that are taken note of.

But as you say, companies that can innovate on a continuous basis over time will actually succeed and be far better off than the ones that choose to look at large transformation programs. So, thanks for that very keen insight.

Looking forward in terms of adoption, especially of cloud technologies, where do you see the industry, and yourself, Resimac, play in terms of adaption of cloud or industry or AI or technology specific.

Majid: Adoption of cloud technology is crucial but often overlooked. Academics talk about the “learning organisation”—one that, when applied to technology, fosters true adoption. Simply put, the same platform deployed in two organisation’s can yield vastly different results. Even within one organisation, different units might experience varying performance uplift. The differences often hinge on leadership’s ability to learn, adapt, understand processes, evolve, make sustainable investments, set KPIs, and actively encourage frontline staff to adopt the new technology. Without this adoption capability, becoming a frontrunner is challenging, and it’s a skill practiced over time.

Regarding artificial intelligence (AI), the conversation can often be reductive. Many articles focus on simply adding a large language model to a process and calling it AI. In reality, AI encompasses much more—expert systems, machine learning, regression analysis, vision, audio systems, and beyond.

The possibilities AI brings to an organisation are limitless. We should question whether assumptions in our strategy—around cost leadership, channels, customer value propositions, and customer segments—are fundamentally changed by the introduction of AI. Starting here, comprehensive change would need to be delivered to truly take advantage of the capabilities that are being unlocked.

Theo: Majid, I can’t agree with you more. I believe that projects driven by a genuine need for technology, rather than simply showcasing it, tend to achieve greater success, largely due to the organisation’s commitment to adoption. Cultivating a strong culture of adoption is key to ensuring successful outcomes, and with the right implementation, the benefits that artificial intelligence can provide will be truly remarkable.

Continuing on, could you please elaborate on the organisation’s transformation journey through the cloud and how do you envision this transformation journey, ensuring that you meet customer expectations?

Majid: So, you’ve said a key word there – customer expectations. That is a critical part of our strategy at Resimac. It is possible in our industry to generate a lot of volume and attract a lot of customers using price as the only lever.

But we are quite convinced in our strategy that while you can attract customers on price, you can’t retain them with poor service, and therefore, customer service forms a critical part of how we think about the lifecycle of the customer. And now over the last four years Resimac has invested heavily in our entire stack and we have replaced pretty much all of our customer lifecycle management stack.

The critical part of that has been the customer service component and that has had a significant effect on how we engage and interact with our customers.

Today, we are on a completely new and revamped internet access platform. We’ve now released four mobile apps in the market, across the different brands that we manage. And this has had a significant impact on how we engage and interact with our customers. To give you a couple of examples, our metrics around call handling, first call resolution, and customer satisfaction are at historical highs. 

If I look across the past four or five years, that is not a technology component alone; we’ve had to do a lot of work in parallel around the culture of customer service. Understanding the customer journey across that adoption point that I made earlier, going all the way through to metrics and KPIs and tracking, as well as having honest and open conversations with our teams about what we are trying to do with customer experience.

So together, those elements have made a significant difference to what we’ve been able to achieve in the organisation.

Theo: Thank you, Majid. That’s very insightful. And I think the point you raised, again, it’s not just about a price discussion in the market; quality and service differentiation are what really sets our companies apart. 

In terms of the partnership with Infosys Finacle, how has it helped you in this journey?

Majid: So, Resimac is a composer of services in the financial services industry. We secure funding via our debt investors, and we make home loans and asset-financed loans available to our borrowers via brokers who help us get to parts of the market that we can’t access ourselves.

Resimac’s role is to bring together a value chain that adds value to every party that interacts within this value chain. What we decided early on is that a core platform that allows us to provide banking services is not something that we can bring to this value chain. 

So, partnering with an organisation of scale gives us a number of advantages. It allows us access to what is being considered at a global scale, and it gives us access to more recent and current thinking around customer service. But most importantly, it enables us, and frees us up to bring to the value chain our expertise in customer servicing, in funding, in broker networks, and in managing that integration as opposed to becoming the party that is implementing core banking systems of scale.

Theo: Majid, thank you very much for the interview and for the valuable insights that you shared with us. I’m sure the audience will find as much value in your comments and what you’ve added. Thank you again Majid, for participating today and we wish you all the best for your success at Resimac.