We spoke with Chief Commercial Officer Mike Breen about the pressures facing Australia’s mutual banks and credit unions, the risks of traditional transformation, and why a progressive modernisation model may offer a more practical path forward.

What is this article about:

Australia’s mutual banks and credit unions face a genuine modernisation dilemma: patch legacy systems and fall further behind, or attempt a full-scale transformation most cannot afford to get wrong. Mike Breen explains why a third path exists, and what it looks like in practice.

Key takeaways:

1. 1. The modernisation dilemma is real. The institutions that most need to modernise are often the ones least able to absorb the cost and risk.
   2. Control stays with the bank. audax manages the technology; the bank retains its products, pricing, member relationships and community proposition.
   3. Modernisation is a question of economic sustainability, not just technology. Legacy architecture connects every pressure: cost, experience, compliance. A managed platform changes the equation without an all-or-nothing programme.

What do you see as the defining challenge facing Australian mutual banks and credit unions right now?

Mike: Australia’s mutual banks and credit unions have something the major banks cannot manufacture: genuine community trust. They serve millions of Australians in communities the Big Four don’t always prioritise, and they have built member relationships over many years. That is an extraordinary asset.

What concerns me is whether they have the technology infrastructure to defend and scale it. The market is becoming more demanding very quickly: margin compression, rising digital expectations, increasing regulatory requirements, fraud exposure, legacy core constraints, and fragmented data. Each is difficult on its own. Together, they create what I would call the modernisation dilemma.

The institutions that most need to modernise are often the ones for whom traditional transformation is hardest to absorb.

What does the industry currently offer as solutions, and where do those fall short?

Mike: Customer-owned banks have historically been offered two imperfect choices. The first is to leave the core untouched and layer digital experience on top, which delivers short-term improvement but creates more complexity underneath over time. The second is full-scale transformation, which works for large institutions with deep technology teams and the capacity to absorb multi-year delivery risk. For most mutuals and credit unions, it is too expensive, too disruptive and too risky.

Neither option reflects what makes these institutions different. Their strength is local relevance, member trust, and personal service; not a desire to become a smaller version of the major banks. Any modernisation strategy should strengthen those capabilities, not push institutions into a generic operating model.

What is audax’s answer to this?

Mike: We provide a plug-and-play digital banking platform delivered as a managed technology service. That means audax takes responsibility for the platform, infrastructure, operations, resilience and ongoing upgrades; while the institution retains full control of its products, pricing, member relationships and community proposition. We are not asking banks to become operators of generic products. Their differentiation comes from local decision-making and member relationships; our role is to give them the technology foundation to protect and scale that.

Institutions can start where the pain is most acute: digital onboarding, member servicing, operational workflows, product configuration; and migrate additional capabilities progressively at a pace aligned to their readiness and risk appetite. The pace is set by the bank’s strategy, not by the vendor’s delivery model.

On cost and experience: by adopting modern banking capability as a managed service, institutions reduce the burden of running complex technology in-house, automate more servicing, and lower cost-to-serve. Members now benchmark their experience against the best digital apps they use every day. Community trust remains a genuine advantage, but trust has to be backed by capability.

How does this model reduce transformation risk?

Mike: Traditional transformation asks banks to make very large commitments before they see any value: substantial upfront investment, complex migration, multiple vendor dependencies, long delivery timelines. That is especially difficult for customer-owned institutions that manage capital carefully and cannot afford member disruption.

Our approach changes the risk profile. Rather than replacing everything at once, institutions modernise in stages: beginning with priority journeys, delivering real improvement to members, and making future core decisions in a controlled way. It allows boards to move forward without betting the institution on a single event. Migration becomes something that is actively managed and sequenced, not a cliff edge.

How should Australian mutual banks and credit unions think about regulation, and does modernisation help?

Mike: I would encourage institutions to view regulation as an enabler of long-term capability rather than simply a compliance cost. APRA’s operational resilience and cyber security requirements, the Consumer Data Right, financial crime obligations. These raise the bar on what adequate infrastructure means for an ADI. The institutions that navigate this most effectively are the ones whose technology was designed for resilience and adaptability from the start, not retrofitted onto fragmented systems.

The same applies to product flexibility. One of the real risks in modernisation is ending up with technology that makes a bank more standardised, not more differentiated. Banks should be able to manage their own products, pricing, eligibility criteria and customer journeys without raising a change request every time the market shifts. That is why configurability is central to what we build. The bank retains the business levers that matter.

What is the message you want Australian customer-owned financial institutions to take away?

Mike: Australia’s mutual banks and credit unions have a very important role to play. They serve communities the major banks don’t always prioritise. They have trust, local relevance and member relationships that are genuinely valuable.

But those strengths need modern capability behind them. The future of community banking will not be protected by standing still. What audax offers is not a model that takes control away from the bank. It is the opposite. We provide the technology platform and managed service so the institution can retain control of its business, its products, and its community role.

The goal is not to make every bank look the same. It is to give community-owned institutions the capability to continue thriving on their own terms.

About Mike

Mike Breen is Chief Commercial Officer at audax, a B2B digital banking platform incubated within Standard Chartered(SC) Ventures, Standard Chartered’s innovation and ventures unit. He leads audax’s go-to-market strategy and partnerships across APAC and MENA.

Talk to Mike and the audax Team

Meet us at the World Credit Union Conference 2026 in Sydney. Arrange a 1:1 with Mike to discuss what progressive modernisation could look like for your institution.