Heritage Bank gets ahead in innovation
HERITAGE Bank is proof that you don’t need to be in a metropolitan city to be innovative.
From its head office in Toowoomba, Heritage is delivering a wide range of innovative banking options for its customers, all with Heritage’s focus on service and achieving great outcomes for members as Australia’s largest customer-owned bank.
Heritage customers can now send and receive money quicker through the New Payments Platform (NPP).
Transferring money by NPP sees the funds arrive at the destination account in seconds or minutes, rather than days.
Heritage customers are loving the faster payments, as the number of transfers through NPP is now greater than the number of interbank transfers through Heritage’s mobile app.
There are also a wide range of digital wallets that Heritage supports including Samsung Pay, Google Pay, Garmin Pay and Fitbit Pay.
Heritage also has an offer currently available where new customers with an eligible transaction account receive a HOVA wearable payment band, which has the functionality of a Visa debit card in a wristband.
The HOVA is linked to a Visa debit account and allows the wearer to make payments at any contactless reader
It’s great for summer as you can wear it at the pool or beach and still have the ability to make payments without your wallet or phone.
Heritage is also achieving great results in robotic process automation which frees up time for staff to focus on other more meaningful tasks.
Robotics software helps automate mundane, previously time-consuming processes and frees up staff to invest more time on other tasks and projects that provide a better benefit for customers.
For its process automation program, Heritage partners with global artificial intelligence leader UiPath, which also works with the likes of Uber and NASA.
Such is the impressive work being done at Heritage, the Toowoomba-based customer-owned bank was used as a case study of cutting-edge use of robotics technology during the keynote address at UiPath’s Forward III Conference in Las Vegas last month.
Heritage’s automation and process excellence manager David Johnston shared the stage with UiPath chief product officer Param Kahlon and representatives from PepsiCo and Google Cloud, in front of 3000 delegates from across the world.
Chief information officer Wayne Marchant said UIPath is an international leader in robotics processing automation.
“To be featured as a case study in the keynote address of this conference speaks volumes about what we’ve been able to achieve at Heritage,” Mr Marchant said.
Heritage has also worked with one of the world’s leading IT solution providers, Red Hat.
That saw Heritage pick up two awards for digital transformation and modern application development at Red Hat’s APAC Innovation Awards in Melbourne last month.
“Our digital transformation journey is still ongoing but we’re delighted with the results and impact it’s had on our business so far,” Mr Marchant said.
And while much of this innovation is automating and digitising processes and offerings to provide a better banking experience, Heritage still manages to maintain a personable element.
Heritage has brought in webchat on its website and, while this is now a common feature on numerous sites, many rely on chatbots to handle queries.
Instead, Heritage maintains its people first approach by having actual staff in its Toowoomba-based contact centre chat with website users to ensure that human connection remains.