NAB hopes to adapt by becoming an information-led business and a leader in managing data and information quality, Curran said. "We really need to put the 'I' back into CIO," he said. "CIOs have become technology officers much more than information officers. We have to transition the IT organisation [and] make that far more about how we direct and support the strategy."

NAB is "implementing new core systems, but it's a multi-year journey," Curran said. NAB will roll out a new voice infrastructure, "which would seem to be counter-intuitive, but we see a rebirth of voice," he said. Also, NAB is "getting rid of a lot of the old application sets because of the inbuilt complexity they have," and replacing them with "a more cogent set of more integrated applications".

Security and privacy are critical to building trust, an essential element of banking, Curran said. "In a time where there is elevated concern" about security among the government, consumers and businesses, "we have to be great at security and privacy".

Banks must also adapt to social media, he said. "Banks traditionally have been part of the social fabric. I think over the last 10 years we've lost a lot of that."

NAB seeks to provide information anywhere, anytime and anyhow for its customers. That means supporting multiple types of devices running a variety of operating systems, Curran said. On mobile, it means supporting multiple information channels, including NFC, SMS and voice, he said.