Nationwide has pledged to invest a total of £4.1 billion in technology transformation over next five years, including the re-platforming of digital assets.

The building society is looking to create up to 1,000 new jobs and open a new UK technology hub, with a strategy focused on driving UK service leadership through digitisation and multi-channel technology integration across the High Street and mobile channels.

This innovation agenda includes the creation of a £50 million FinTech venture fund and planned launch of Open Banking aggregation services.

Technical transformation will be underpinned by significant operating model changes driven by Agile adoption, DevOps standards and cloud exploitation.

Specifically, the new technology investment will address six areas, being:

• Simplification of underlying application and infrastructure estate to enable growth.
• Developing a greenfield digital platform to build the necessary foundations to develop products and propositions that will serve member needs of the future and exploit the opportunities created by emerging platform business models.
• Continue to invest heavily in branches by creating a unique service experience on the High Street, integrating video, social media and face-to-face channels.
• Improve the service experience and the cost efficiency in equal measure, delivering enhanced value for members.
• Simplifying the data estate, including reducing current data stores from 20 to two. Also increasing investment in AI and machine learning to drive a step change in analytics and insight capabilities.
• Opening a technology hub for Nationwide in the UK to support digital and data transformation, employing between 750 and 1,000 people over time.

Deputy chief executive Tony Prestedge said that as a mutual, Nationwide can afford to take a longer-term view rather than focus on short term gains.

“The pace of technological change means that we need to reassess continually how we serve our members in order to remain relevant, valued and competitive. We are therefore seizing this moment with confidence as we set ourselves up to succeed long into the future.”

Already this year, Nationwide has launched a £50 million FinTech fund to invest and partner with early stage startups, announced an Open Banking challenge with the government, and upgraded its customer service technology.

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