NAB will more than double its investment into its innovation hub, NAB Labs, as well as increasing the NAB Labs workforce by 70 per cent in 2018, as it continues to deliver new experiences for customers.
This announcement comes as part of NAB’s record $4.5 billion investment into the bank to accelerate the strategy with a heavy focus on technology and digital priorities over the next three years.
Almost three years on since NAB Labs was established, Chief Operating Officer Antony Cahill said the innovation hub continued to play an important role in exploring and creating new and leading customer experiences.
“We have a clear plan; we are investing in our platforms, services and products to deliver faster, simpler and seamless experiences for our customers,” Mr Cahill said.
“We are bringing the age of digital to our customers and to do that, we need to continue to attract the best talent and invest in our resources to deliver those new experiences our customers are expecting from us.
“NAB Labs and our venture capital fund, NAB Ventures, play an extremely important role, looking closely at emerging trends and new technologies for opportunities where we can create strategic partnerships that deliver new and exciting experiences for our customers.”
The announcement will see NAB Labs boosted by an additional 35 new team members in 2018, taking the team to 85 dedicated employees.
“The increased investment will include extra resources for our incubator program to support the scaling of initiatives such as the recently launched HICAPS Go app, developed in partnership with start-up Medipass Solutions, as well as to increase our new experiment numbers,” Mr Cahill said.
“The success of digital solutions, such as our QuickBiz Loan for small business and our partnership with fintech ‘Look Who’s Charging’ to provide instant information for customers on their credit card transactions via our mobile banking app, are pointers on why we are continuing to invest for our customers.
“Around 30 per cent of our new small business loans came through QuickBiz in the May-September period, while the ‘Look Who’s Charging’ functionality has been used more than one million times since we launched in August.”
The added investment will support NAB Labs’ initiatives in areas such as experimentation, incubation and human centred design. On top of the 85 dedicated employees, the NAB Labs team can swell to around 150 people at any given time pending the number of experiments underway.
“We will look inside and outside our organisation for the very best people with the right skills and experience, who are creative thinkers, embrace agile working and challenge the status quo, to fill these roles,” Mr Cahill said.
In addition, NAB last month announced it would hire a further 600 technology specialists in the areas of software engineering, data, architecture and security.