Constantinople banks on software service for Australia’s lenders
Sydney-based software group Constantinople is offering banking as a service to solve the technical mess of legacy systems in Australia’s banks.
Constantinople, a software start-up aiming to be a back-end provider to Australia’s banks, has launched a banking-as-a-service platform as it prepares to go live with its first client, Great Southern Bank.
The Sydney software company, which secured $32m backing from Square Peg, Airtree Ventures and Great Southern Bank, aims to shake up the ways banks approach technology.
Constantinople is working to get financial institutions back to banking by offering them off-the-shelf software systems that can be used to automate large parts of the business and strip out costs.
Great Southern Bank has signed on to use Constantinople’s systems for a foray into small and medium business lending.
The software company is offering a software platform for banks that allows them to fully cover customer experience, banking products, infrastructure, operations, servicing and compliance without the need to commit millions of dollars internally to develop a bespoke system.
Former Westpac executive Dianne Challenor and Macgregor Duncan, who co-founded Constantinople after a career in banking, said they wanted to deal with the spiralling complexity and cost of internal technology at banks.
Ms Challenor said too often banks were dragged into technological and operational challenges.
“(Constantinople) really enables a bank to think about their go-to market really differently,” she said.
Ms Challenor said Constantinople was stepping into an area no other software company was playing in.
“We believe we can do this at a fraction of what it costs the bank,” she said.
“If banks can focus on their customers they can really provide a better experience; whether you’re a large bank or member-owned, you can focus on what customers need.”
Several banks have had difficulty upgrading or replacing existing technology.
ANZ Plus, the bank’s touted banking transformation, has resulted in the group investing heavily in upgrading its digital systems.
Bank of Queensland has announced plans to upgrade and transform its separate banking systems across its brands, partnering with Swiss technology operator Temenos in mid-2022.
Mr Duncan said there was an increasing need for banks to have an instant overview of their systems – something which legacy tech platforms often complicated.
“We don’t integrate with legacy systems; we run an integrated platform that works natively together,” he said.
“This is part of a problem the banks have got themselves into. They’ve got these incredible legacy systems. There are lots of very complex hand-offs.”
He said Constantinople’s systems were standardised and configurable, allowing a broad view of a bank’s operations.
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