Insiders Connection – Simon Davies, CBA

Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s General Manager for Core Banking, Simon Davies, takes you inside the 18‑month journey to move one of Australia’s most critical systems from mainframe to a cloud‑enabled SAP core—while the bank stayed live and processing millions of transactions a day. He explains how CBA’s SAP core banking platform underpins 40% of all money movements in the Australian economy, why the 2027 ECC end‑of‑service deadline became a catalyst rather than a constraint, and how cloud, resilience, and interoperability are reshaping their technology “heart” into a bionic core for future innovation.

Simon unpacks what “extraordinary engineering discipline” looks like in practice: rehearsals that felt like a moon landing, near‑zero disruption targets, new safety nets to protect customer experiences, and a culture of courage where mistakes are surfaced early rather than hidden. He shares how executive air cover from the CEO down made this the bank’s number‑one priority, how thousands of people across 50+ lines of business aligned on standards, accountability, and risk, and what new capabilities CBA has unlocked now that core banking runs on a modern, cloud‑enabled SAP stack.