Greater Bank, founded in 1945 and serving the community as a customer-owned banking institution, has undertaken a significant digital transformation over the past three years to modernise and streamline its IT processes. In fact, a whopping 65% of its existing technology has changed.

Underpinning new anti-money laundering and fraud capabilities is a SAS-hosted managed service solution delivered on Microsoft Azure.

SAS' research in conjunction with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) identifies 60% of businesses globally expect their anti-fraud technology budgets to skyrocket over the coming years followed by increases in fraud and crime that have been accelerated by the pandemic.

Greater Bank takes this seriously, proven by its investment in fraud detection and prevention to ensure its customers are safe and protected.

The bank and SAS have worked together since 2013, though this current project began in 2020. Greater Bank engaged external advisors and explored the market for on-premises and cloud solutions, which lead it to SAS and the SAS-hosted Microsoft Azure platform as the option most suited to provide an efficient, compliant, and world-class cybercrime toolkit. Further, this option continues the bank’s objectives to simplify and strengthen its IT operations and revolutionise its customer experiences. It further continues to enable the bank to be a significant challenger to larger banking competitors.

Greater Bank group general counsel and company secretary Greg Nyman said, “Digital transformation comes in a lot of different shapes and forms. It’s large and comprehensive for us at Greater Bank – there are numerous streams of activity and various exciting changes occurring. In that new bank, SAS is driving solutions for fraud and AML that support our entire enterprise. There's no distinction between different channels or aspects of our bank. This is an enterprise solution by any definition, and we entered into this relationship with SAS, selecting the partner that we thought could support us with a package for our entire organisational needs.”

“In our quest to become a more agile, nimbler organisation, SAS is helping us to simplify our IT operations by eliminating the need to manage our own on-premises infrastructure. Not only does this align with our own cloud journey and strategy, but it will enable us to invest more time into creating a safe, secure, and reliable environment for our customers that ultimately allows us to focus on growth, building upon a really solid base of established trust. The AML and fraud solution from SAS is grounded in ease-of-use, real-time data insights and automation, allowing us to act more rapidly than ever before to remedy any potential threats,” Nyman said.

SAS director financial services ANZ Neil Vasey said, "Navigating the changing business landscape over the past 12 months, we’ve seen increased reports of fraud and evolving money laundering threats. It’s a trend we, unfortunately, don’t expect to slow. It’s now crucial for banks to have intelligent data and analytics systems in place that reduce the threat and ensure nimble, rapid resolution.”

“Greater Bank is now well ahead of the curve with its new AML and fraud solution in place. When we were initially talking to Greater Bank, we discussed an on-premises system, but ultimately, we are delivering a Hosted Managed Service on Microsoft Azure that allows the Bank to focus resources on the customer with the confidence that the technology it uses has enterprise-grade support, backed with SLAs and SLTs.”

“The partnership with SAS has been exemplary," Nyman said. "A real shared vision. SAS did a great job at getting us out of the starting blocks quickly. Being a customer-owned bank means we're not beholding to shareholders. That allows us to pivot and more easily adhere to the regulatory guidelines to the best of our ability. We believe that our members and customers who ultimately own this organisation feel strongly about the risks. So, when it comes to fraud and AML, they care.”

As a treat for readers, enjoy this flashback to one of the Greater's most famous advertising campaigns among locals, with none other than Jerry Seinfeld on the streets of Newcastle (back when it was Greater Building Society).