Innovate Beyond Boundaries is a four-part leadership series highlighting NAB’s spirit of innovation through the stories of its leaders, while offering a closer look at the people, culture, and engineering mindset behind the organisation.
In the opening episode, Paul Cooke, Executive, Transaction Banking and Enterprise Payments at NAB, shares how NAB Vietnam is redefining the role of technology centres in Vietnam: from delivery hubs executing predefined work to engineering organisations that own products and solve complex customer problems.
Moving from Sydney to Vietnam wasn't part of Paul Cooke's original plan. But National Australia Bank - NAB's ambitious growth strategy and the exceptional potential he saw in Vietnam's engineering talent, changed his perspective.
What was initially expected to be a temporary assignment soon became a long-term commitment. Paul relocated to Ho Chi Minh City with his family and even their pets, convinced that Vietnam was more than just another expansion market. It was where NAB could build world-class technology capabilities for a global banking business.
Growth Is About Ownership, Not Headcount
For many multinational companies, growth is often measured by headcount and hiring targets. Paul Cooke sees it differently.
To him, the real growth of NAB Innovation Centre Vietnam lies in the professional development of every engineer. While scale is necessary to support a growing technology organisation, sustainable success depends on building capability, confidence, and ownership across the team. That philosophy starts with accountability.
Rather than assigning fragmented tasks or traditional outsourced work, NAB gives its engineers end-to-end ownership of products and services. Engineers are expected to understand customer needs, own the outcomes they deliver, and continuously improve the solutions they build.
By stepping outside their comfort zones and taking responsibility for the full customer journey, Vietnamese engineers have accelerated not only their technical expertise but also their ability to lead and collaborate across global teams.
From “Offshore Delivery” To Ownership
For years, technology centres across Asia have largely been viewed as offshore delivery hubs, teams responsible for executing work designed somewhere else.
Paul believes that model no longer reflects how modern technology organisations should operate.
At NAB Vietnam, engineers are not positioned as a remote support function. They are fully integrated into NAB's global engineering organisation, working with the same technology platforms, sharing the same culture, and contributing to the same strategic priorities as colleagues in Australia.
The biggest difference lies in how work is assigned. Rather than waiting for detailed instructions, engineers are trusted with real customer challenges and given the autonomy to determine the best solution.
We don't give people outsourced tasks. We give them significant problems to solve.
That distinction fundamentally changes how engineers think. When people are assigned tasks, success is measured by completing predefined requirements. But when they are given problems to solve, they are expected to challenge assumptions, explore different approaches, experiment, and ultimately take ownership of the outcome.
AI Enables Engineers To Create Greater Value
Artificial intelligence has rapidly evolved from an emerging technology into an everyday engineering tool. For Paul, AI isn't about replacing software engineers. It's about helping them focus on work that matters most.
NAB Vietnam has been among the early adopters exploring how AI can improve software development, from accelerating engineering workflows to increasing productivity and delivering better outcomes for customers.
More importantly, AI allows engineers to spend less time on repetitive work and more time tackling complex challenges that require creativity, critical thinking, and a deep understanding of customer needs.
As AI becomes increasingly capable of automating routine tasks, competitive advantage will no longer come from completing work faster. Instead, it will come from identifying better problems to solve and designing better solutions for customers.
Innovation Knows No Geographic Boundaries
For Paul, innovation has never been constrained by geography.
Many organisations still assume that strategic decisions happen at headquarters while overseas offices play a supporting role. Paul believes that mindset is increasingly outdated.
A good leader is a good leader, regardless of whether they're in Australia, Vietnam, or India.
The same principle applies to engineering and innovation. Great ideas aren't defined by where they're created, but by the value they deliver.
Across NAB, engineering teams collaborate across borders, sharing ideas, best practices, and technical expertise to build products as one global organisation. Through cross-market collaboration and regular engagement with leaders across the business, engineers in Vietnam are not only contributing to product development but also helping shape engineering practices across the wider NAB ecosystem.
Vietnam's role has evolved beyond simply participating in global projects. Increasingly, it's becoming a place where new technology leaders emerge, leaders who influence how products are built and how engineering teams work across the organisation.
Building Global Banking Technology Starts with Empowerment
At NAB, leadership isn't defined by location. What matters is the ability to create value, inspire others, and solve meaningful problems.
That philosophy extends beyond leadership roles. It shapes the way engineering teams are built and empowered every day.
Rather than controlling every decision, the organisation focuses on creating an environment where engineers understand the customer, own the outcome, and have the autonomy to determine the best solution.
Looking back on his two years in Vietnam, Paul says what makes him most proud isn't the size of the engineering organisation or the number of products delivered.
It's seeing Vietnamese engineers grow into more confident professionals, taking ownership of increasingly complex challenges and earning the trust and recognition of colleagues across NAB's global network.
Perhaps that's the most significant transformation taking place at NAB Vietnam. The organisation isn't simply building another technology centre for an Australian bank.
It's demonstrating how the role of Vietnamese engineers is evolving within the global technology value chain from executing assigned tasks to owning products, from implementing requirements to solving complex customer problems, and from being seen as an outsourcing destination to becoming a place where world-class banking technology is designed, built, and continuously improved.
As AI reshapes software engineering and global organisations rethink where innovation happens, Vietnam's greatest advantage may no longer be its cost competitiveness.
Instead, it lies in something far more valuable: the ability to develop engineering talent capable of building the future of global banking.
Special thanks to NAB Vietnam for partnering with Vietnam Innovators to bring Innovate Beyond Boundaries to life. Through this four-episode series, NAB Vietnam shares a closer look at the people, ideas, and culture driving innovation at NAB, while showcasing Vietnam's growing role in building world-class technology for the global stage.
Watch full episode HERE.