Nationwide says that its new banking platform has made it possible to reach a major milestone in its transformation project. The building society has announced the launch of a brand new current account, FlexPlus.

This is the society’s first packaged account offering such benefits as worldwide travel insurance, mobile phone insurance, UK and EU breakdown assistance. It joins the launch of FlexDirect, a self-service current account paying a credit interest rate of five per cent p.a./AER; mobile banking app, which has over 400,000 downloads since its launch; new online bank; ISA track and trace service; mortgage processing software, to speed up mortgage offers; new datacentre.

Tony Prestedge, chief operating officer at Nationwide, comments: “Meeting the needs of our customers is at the heart of everything we do and our investment in technology gives us the tools we need to do that. Our focus has been on providing our customers with new and better ways to do business with us and a greater choice in transaction methods that meet their needs, as well as improving the choice of products and services. The mobile banking app is an excellent example of this with the feedback from customers showing this has been really well received. It’s easy to use functionality means customers can now check balances, and make payments on the go which is increasingly important to consumers as we now all expect a variety of ways to bank.”

He adds: “The new banking platform delivered with our technology partner IBM and technology providers SAP and Axxiome, went live last year and is at the heart of our new FlexDirect and FlexPlus current accounts. The platform enables Nationwide to create more flexible products, providing our members with more choice and helping to ensure we bring competition to the current account market. This is just the start of a series of planned developments to make us a more agile, innovative and responsive financial services provider.”

“The financial services sector is undergoing significant and rapid transformation and banks are realising the need to leverage technology to become increasingly agile and continue focusing on the customer in order to gain a competitive edge,” says John Granger, general manager, IBM Global Business Services Europe. “The new milestones are key to Nationwide's transformational journey and help meet rising customer demand for new products and easy access to services and innovative apps.”

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