Name: Andrew Cresp
Title: Former Chief Information Officer
Company: Bendigo and Adelaide Bank
Tenure in role:  Jan 2020 – Sep 2024
Reporting line:  Executive Team member and Chief Transformation Officer
Member of the executive team: No
Technology Function: 1,151, with 13 direct
 
 
As chief information officer at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Andrew Cresp spearheaded a multi-year transformation strategy aimed at simplifying and modernising the bank’s operations. His goal was to empower bankers to better meet the needs of the bank’s 2.5 million customers.
 
In late 2023, Cresp unlocked a significant breakthrough in the bank’s digital transformation by adopting a global-first use case to trial a groundbreaking Generative AI (GenAI) capability.
 
“That capability gave us the tools we needed to rapidly shift critical legacy applications to cloud-native, microservices-ready architecture—cutting costs by up to 90 per cent,” Cresp explained.
 
While the bank had made significant progress on its transformation, they hit a common industry roadblock—what Cresp referred to as a “cloud stall.” Migrating complex, mission-critical legacy applications to the cloud is typically an expensive and time-consuming process, a challenge many financial institutions face.
 
Through Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s strong vendor partnerships, particularly with MongoDB, Cresp and his team found a solution to break through this impasse.
 
“To keep pace with our customers’ evolving needs, we had to innovate and move faster while ensuring their money remains safe,” Cresp noted. “Cloud-based digital banking enables greater resilience and availability for our customers.”
 
In April 2024, the bank successfully modernized its Agent Delivery System (ADS)—a legacy retail teller application used by non-bank partners to provide Bendigo Bank services. This was made possible by deploying GenAI tooling that significantly accelerated the bank’s digital transformation.
 
By June 2024, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank made headlines globally, particularly across the APAC region, for using GenAI tools to drive modernisation, cut costs, and accelerate customer-focused innovation.
 
“We’ll continue to leverage AI and GenAI to deliver features that our customers need, safely and efficiently,” Cresp said.
 
The bank, with its customer-centric focus, was eager to free up developers to focus on customer-driven innovation and stay agile in a fast-moving market. However, this required overcoming the cloud migration challenges that had stalled their progress.
 
“Our aim was to modernise legacy applications while enabling reusable microservices, so our developers could focus on delivering customer features faster,” Cresp explained.
 
In October 2023, MongoDB invited Bendigo and Adelaide Bank to participate in a pilot for its new GenAI solution, alongside three other banks globally. Cresp agreed to participate, with the condition that the pilot would deliver real, measurable outcomes.
 
Tackling Complex Challenges
 
According to Cresp, GenAI thrives on complexity, making the bank’s cloud migration challenges an ideal use case.
 
“It made sense for us to use MongoDB Atlas as the platform for this technology stack, given its flexibility, reliability, security, and ability to manage our real-time operational data,” Cresp said.
 
The document model offered an intuitive developer experience, allowing the team to build applications quickly. In addition, Cresp wanted to adopt a microservice architecture to improve data integration and create a robust API ecosystem for seamless data flow between applications, third parties, and consumers. MongoDB sent their global best GenAI team to Bendigo’s head office in Victoria, embedding them alongside Cresp’s team.
 
Building trust
 
Cresp’s leadership has been instrumental in building trust in how technology can drive business outcomes. Delivering tangible proof points along the way has strengthened confidence in the bank’s digital transformation.
 
“Influence comes from deepening relationships across the bank,” Cresp said. “I’ve aligned my leadership team to foster strong relationships with their respective executive teams and maintain regular updates to the board and executives on our progress.”
 
To ensure customer safety and data security, Cresp also prioritised representation at divisional risk committees throughout the transformation journey.
 
Cresp finished up in his role as 玩偶姐姐 at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank in September 2024.