BOQ Group x Optus: A simpler, stronger and future-ready bank for its customers

BOQ Group is a bank built on relationships. For more than 150 years, that commitment to customers and communities has shaped how the Group operates – and how it evolves.

Put simply, BOQ Group’s aspiration is being “the bank customers choose”. But today’s customers have more choice of banks, more freedom to move between them, and more expectations of a convenient, digital banking experience.

BOQ Group already protects the finances and futures of 1.5 million Australians across digital brands including Virgin Money, ME Bank and myBOQ, alongside relationship-based brands BOQ, BOQ Specialist and BOQ Finance, giving customers a wide choice of how they access services.

Yet in this fiercely competitive landscape, BOQ Group recognised that achieving its vision would depend on something largely invisible to customers: a secure, resilient, and simplified technology foundation. Over time, a fragmented network and security environment – managed across multiple vendors – was creating unnecessary complexity, governance overhead and operational risk.

BOQ Group set an ambitious goal: rapidly simplify its technology foundation, strengthen security and resilience, and create a platform capable of supporting future innovation. All without disrupting customers or day-to-day operations.

Here’s how BOQ Group and Optus built a trusted partnership that matched technical acumen with shared ambition – delivering a simpler bank, and the outstanding experience that customers choose.

Over time, BOQ Group’s technology environment had grown increasingly complex. A series of acquisitions saw the organisation become saddled with multiple operating models, each with its own assembly of technology partners and supply chains.

Craig Ryman, BOQ Group’s Chief Information and Operations Officer, describes this complexity as “big bank-esque”. An internal review found that BOQ Group’s technology environment needed 240 applications to deliver its strategy – but the actual count had grown to 780, over 3x the complexity required.

This complexity affected more than IT operations. It increased governance overhead, slowed incident resolution, and made it harder to respond quickly to new business demands, security threats and regulatory expectations.

As cloud adoption accelerated and mobile ways of working became the norm, BOQ saw the opportunity to modernise its legacy infrastructure. With a growing mobile workforce, and increasing customer expectations on operations and resilience, the Group needed a partner who could simplify its infrastructure, strengthen security, and transform its customer experience – without disrupting stability.

By simplifying its managed network, security and vendor landscape, BOQ Group set out to improve responsiveness across the organisation, enable new ways of banking, and compete for every customer. A simpler, more resilient technology foundation would also allow the bank to focus on emerging priorities such as AI, fraud prevention and digital engagement.

BOQ Group’s objectives included:

• Build a best-in-class digital offering for customers
• Reduce infrastructure and vendor complexity
• Strengthen security, resilience and operational assurance
• Improve speed of change and incident response
• Enable mobile and flexible ways of working
• Create a foundation ready for emerging capabilities in AI, fraud prevention and digital experiences

Following a comprehensive tender process, BOQ Group selected Optus – not just to deliver technology, but as a strategic partner. From the outset, Optus stood out: rather than simply pricing up services, the team assessed BOQ Group’s existing environment, charted a path to a more contemporary offering, and identified a financial benefit alongside the technical uplift.

As Ryman explains, a true strategic partner is different from a technology supplier: they deeply understand the business, proactively challenge thinking, execute reliably, and are culturally aligned.

All things told, in just 12 months, Optus and BOQ Group transformed the bank’s network, security and collaboration capabilities, moving from a fragmented, multi-vendor model to a single partnership.

And while some partners promise togetherness until the contract is signed, a real partner keeps proving their value.

Optus assumed responsibility for the ongoing operation, resilience and optimisation of the bank’s network and security environment, providing end-to-end accountability – from branch connectivity and secure access through to monitoring, incident response and continuous improvement.

Key initiatives included:

• Managed SD-WAN, providing a single accountability, end-to-end managed service that improved capacity, resilience, and operational maturity across the branch network
• Enterprise voice and messaging, enabling secure, seamless communication for mobile and distributed teams
• Edge security, deployed in under 10 days, to rapidly strengthen cyber resilience and automate threat mitigation
• Cloud security services to enhance the security posture and managed services that control access across users, devices and locations
• IT service management platform to automate provisioning and streamline incident and request management
• Vendor consolidation, significantly reducing governance overhead and improving accountability
• Operational resilience requirements, embedded contractually to ensure ongoing alignment with the bank’s resilience and risk expectations

Throughout the transformation, deep but agile governance ensured decision-makers from both organisations were actively involved – from executive sponsors through to technical leaders. This meant issues were addressed early, decisions were made quickly, and accountability was clear on both sides, enabling rapid progress without compromising operational control or risk standards.

Trust underpinned all of it. As Ryman puts it, transformations with this many moving parts depend on knowing your partner is acting in your organisation’s best interests. That trust is what let BOQ Group hand critical services to Optus and focus its own teams on the next challenge. It’s a trust Optus continues to repay at every quarterly review, when the team brings proactive suggestions on where else it can help accelerate BOQ Group’s strategy.

For BOQ Group, this level of collaboration and transparency has been essential – particularly in a highly regulated environment where resilience, accountability and trust in partners directly impact business risk.

By simplifying its foundation and consolidating accountability, BOQ Group has achieved measurable operational, security and cultural benefits.

• 150+ sites modernised in approximately 12 months
• 80% faster incident resolution with streamlined ServiceNow workflows
• Cyber resilience strengthened in under 10 days through automated threat mitigation
• 750+ mobile voice and data services supported, enabling secure work anywhere
• App Store ratings improved from under 2 stars to mid/high 4 stars
• Significant operational cost reduction through vendor consolidation and network optimisation

BOQ Group’s shift to fully managed services with Optus has reduced the operational burden on internal teams, eliminated vendor hand-offs, and significantly improved time to resolution when issues occur. With a single partner responsible for performance and outcomes, the Group has gained greater visibility, stronger governance and confidence that risks are being actively managed – not just reacted to.

Most importantly, BOQ Group teams can now focus less on managing complexity, and more on delivering for customers.

With its core network and security environment transformed, BOQ Group is well positioned for the next phase of its digital journey. It has created a platform to shift from transforming to growing, and to compete for customers on the next major front in banking: AI.

Continued strengthening of fraud and scam protection, and evolution of digital and human-centred banking products, are all part of the roadmap. Optus will remain a key strategic partner, bringing cross-industry insight, managed services and innovation to support BOQ Group’s first-class experiences and future ambitions.