Standard Chartered Bank and Microsoft have announced a three-year strategic partnership to accelerate the bank’s digital transformation through a cloud-first strategy to make virtual banking, next-generation payments, open banking and banking-as-a-service a reality. Using Azure as a cloud platform, the companies will also co-innovate in open banking and real-time payments to help the bank unlock new banking experiences for clients.
Microsoft Azure will be adopted as a preferred cloud platform to meet the bank’s need for resilient data centers and cloud services and address customers’ security, privacy and compliance requirements globally. The first set of capabilities to move to Microsoft Azure will be Standard Chartered’s trade finance systems, allowing for seamless cross-border trade for the bank’s corporate and institutional clients.
Michael Gorriz, group chief information officer of Standard Chartered, said in a statement: “Cloud providers have invested massively in the reliability and automation of infrastructure and platforms. Using cloud services improves our ability to be agile and innovative, while increasing our operational efficiency and resilience. As disruption in the financial industry continues, we can focus on client benefits by deploying our solutions quicker and allowing for faster integration of new business models and partners.”
Bhupendra Warathe, chief technology officer in the Cloud Transformation unit at Standard Chartered, said in a statement: “The pandemic has shone a spotlight on the need for businesses and banks to be resilient from a risk mitigation, cost and security perspective…The speed and scale of continuous innovation offered by Azure allows us to innovate with the latest AI services to meet evolving client needs. We can pilot new apps in one market and scale them rapidly across others. This is especially important for a bank with a footprint as broad and diverse as ours.”
Standard Chartered will also use Microsoft Azure artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics capabilities to enhance and automate banking processes as well as deliver hyper-personalization of its client products and experiences. Co-innovation in open banking application programming interface (API) and Internet-of-Things-based, real-time payments will also help the bank unlock new banking experiences for clients.
Bill Borden, corporate vice president of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft, said in a statement: “Cloud computing is an enabler for financial institutions to modernize their infrastructure and systems, to gain the agility they need to respond to competitive pressures, regulatory environments and customer demand.”
As part of its digital transformation, Standard Chartered will adopt a multi-cloud approach, where significant applications, including its core banking and trading systems and new digital ventures such as virtual banking and banking as-a-service, will be cloud-based by 2025, subject to regulatory approvals. The bank will also adopt a cloud-first principle for all new software developments and major enhancements.