Unity Bank and G&C Mutual Merger: IT Integration for a Leading Customer-Owned Bank

G&C Mutual Bank and Unity Bank are customer-owned banks with a proud history of serving members for over 65 years. Both Banks have worked collaboratively on a range of initiatives for many years culminating in G&C and Unity announcing a ‘merger of equals’ in 2023. The merger provides the opportunity for G&C/Unity to continue to grow sustainably well into the future.  The merged bank has over 60,000 members and nearly $4.0b in assets.

The decision was made to use the G&C database to facilitate the database transition and this required a number of upgrades and module installations, to the G&C database prior to the transition.  The database transition took place on 7 March 2025 also the effective legal date of the merger. 

As the long-time technology partner of both financial institutions, Ultradata facilitated the integration of each financial institution's backend IT systems into one new system that was greater than the sum of its parts.

A Merger of Equals

Australia's financial landscape has long been characterised by mergers. Over the years, Ultradata has helped facilitate a number of mergers where one or both parties are clients.

This consolidation trend is driven by the need to scale digital innovation, meet evolving regulatory requirements, and deliver the convenience and security that modern banking customers expect. Mergers provide these financial institutions with the necessary resources to invest in advanced digital banking solutions, enabling them to enhance their offerings, improve operational efficiency, and remain a genuine alternative to the big banks.

While most mergers involve smaller financial institutions, the merger between Unity Bank and G&C Mutual Bank was one of equals. Both financial institutions had similar member numbers and assets under management.

Working at Ultradata, Neil Pindar was the Project Manager responsible for the merger. He highlighted the additional complexities involved in larger mergers.

"Managing mergers between large financial institutions adds additional complexities due to the high volume of data involved.

For instance, there's a lot more duplicate data to deal with. In this case, 75% of members had duplicate account numbers. From a system integration perspective, we needed to address this before the merger could go ahead."

Strategies for an Efficient Integration

For Ultradata, the system integration needed to happen seamlessly, with no disruption outside the pre-determined outage window. Recognising the scale of this project, the team devised strategies to improve efficiency, ensure continuity, and reduce risks.

These included:

• Data purging and archiving: Before the merger, both financial institutions purged and archived outdated records to reduce the volume of migrated data.
• Pre-merger data entry: Some static data was rekeyed ahead of time, reducing the workload during the critical go-live window.
• Database resizing: The G&C Mutual Bank's Ultracs database was expanded in advance to accommodate incoming data, ensuring a smoother migration.
• Multiple test mergers: The project team conducted four test mergers to refine processes, ensure accurate timelines, and streamline the transition.
• Optimised task execution: The project team coordinated efforts across different timelines, ran concurrent tasks, and split tasks into multiple sessions to speed up execution.

To reduce the uncertainties of go-live night, the project team upgraded the merger's test environment to production-equivalent specs. Neil said this detail was key to a successful, speedy integration.

"With the test environment mirroring the live one, we could accurately time the process, so we knew exactly how long everything would take.

Our fourth and final test merger served as our 'dress rehearsal,' so we knew exactly what to expect when it was time to go live."

These strategies reduced the originally anticipated outage window of 24 hours to just under 10 hours.

Minimising Customer Disruption

A key risk was the potential need for Unity Bank customers to re-register their banking services (internet banking and mobile app), which would have led to a surge in customer service enquiries—far from the ideal way to welcome the new merged bank.

By carefully planning the integration process, the team ensured members retained access to their accounts without re-registration, minimising disruptions and maintaining customer confidence during the early days of the post-merger operations.

Enabling Collaboration

Throughout the project, Ultradata acted as the central point for the merger, bringing together the Unity Bank and G&C Mutual teams and establishing the project's goals and timeline.

To further ensure smooth implementation, the project team worked closely with third parties, including Experteq, the facilities manager, and Cuscal, which handled cards and payment systems. This collaboration ensured all aspects of the merger aligned seamlessly.

Senior Manager Projects at G&C Mutual Bank, Dean Kearney managing the merger project was extremely commendable of the engagement levels of the UltraData team. He said:

“Our project was much more than the Merger. Whilst performing our Trial mergers, together we also accomplished a lot of other significant projects, including, Ultracs 5.1, Online Banking MVP3, Digital Cards and Card Controls, NPP PayTo Payer, IFTI NPP International Transfers, Multibranding, Alerts, Cuscal Vigil, Xero transaction feeds, including integrating the Unity non-standard modifications.

Tackling a project of this duration has undoubtedly been challenging, requiring remarkable perseverance and an extraordinary level of memory retention over time. Throughout the journey, we encountered challenges, and Ultradata’s innovative solutions have been pivotal in addressing high-impact issues.

Together, we achieved this success that would not have been attainable without the exemplary support and collaboration from the Ultradata team.”

This project’s refined methodologies will establish a new standard for future large-scale financial mergers and enabling smoother transitions.