Background: The Commonwealth Bank of Australia was founded in 1911 and now serves more than 17 million customers. It is the largest public company on the ASX by market cap, worth over $280 billion.

What happened: Traditionally, banks like CommBank relied on their own in-house servers to process payments, using clunky physical machines kept in chilled rooms to prevent overheating. But now, CommBank moved its core banking systems to the cloud through a new partnership with Amazon Web Services.

What else: The shift puts CommBank ahead of most of the Big Four. Macquarie Bank made the same move in 2021, while the others are still working to catch up.

What's the key learning?

💡The banks that adopt new technology early often gain an edge that compounds over time. When a bank modernises its systems before everyone else, it wins twice - first with customers and then with investors.

💡Macquarie was the first major bank to move to the cloud back in 2021, and since then, it’s been growing its mortgage market share rapidly thanks to faster loan approvals. In fact, Macquarie’s mortgage book grew at a rate 3.8 times the average of the banking system in August 2024.

💡Meanwhile, ANZ has spent six years and approximately $2 billion trying to build ANZ Plus as its new core banking system... but with little success. So, CommBank will be hoping its big migration to the cloud helps it save costs and grow market share against its slower-moving competitors.