ANZ

IBM has appointed Katrina Troughton as its first female managing director of Australia and New Zealand.  She will be replacing David La Rose who has been promoted to general manager at IBM partner ecosystem based in the US. Sign up for Which-50’s Irregular Insights newsletter Troughton has spent 28 years

Australians got a taste of a world without digital payments on Thursday afternoon when Telstra network outage took down ATM and Eftpos machines at some of Australia’s biggest retailers. All services have now been restored and the telco has apologised for the impact and inconvenience to business and their customers.

Westpac, ANZ and CBA have begun a pilot program to test the digitisation of bank guarantees using IBM’s blockchain technology. The trial, involving shopping centre landlord Scentre Group and its tenants, uses a blockchain platform for bank guarantees instead of the traditional manual paper process. Sign up for Which-50’s Irregular

With a whimper, Open Banking has arrived in Australia. From today, Australia’s big four banks will begin a pilot program to explore Open Banking’s performance, reliability and security. For consumers, a mature Open Banking environment will make it possible to switch home loan providers with a few swipes of an

Pegasystems has appointed Michael Evans as vice president for Australia and New Zealand. The company said this newly created role reflects its growth and investment in the market. According to Pegasystems its headcount locally has more than doubled in the last four years. Sign up for Which-50’s Irregular Insights newsletter

HubSpot has appointed David Shepherd as its first country manager and director of sales for Australia and New Zealand. Shepherd has been at the company for the last eight years and will be responsible for overall management and leadership of the ANZ sales team. Sign up for Which-50’s Irregular Insights

Two ANZ executives Maile Carnegie and Mark Hand have been promoted as the bank announced a new management structure designed to help it navigate the challenges in the sector. Carnegie, the former managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, joined ANZ in 2016 to assist the bank’s digital transformation

VC firm Artesian Venture Partners and the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) have eached chipped in $25 million to create a new $50 million venture capital fund. The agtech fund, named GrainInnovate, will support and resource start-ups which show the potential and commitment to deliver transformational impact to Australia’s

The big four banks are backing a new educational initiative, the Schools Cyber Security program, designed to teach high school students about cyber security skills and encourage them to pursue a career in IT. The Australian Computer Academy (ACA) developed the $1.35 million national program which will be taught to

ANZ expects the impact of open banking on Australia’s financial industry will be profound. So much so that the bank is preparing to fundamentally change its business model. But it had to rely on regulators to get the conversation started. “From a large bank perspective, I think open banking helps