Tag: Financial Services

Microsoft looks to generate $5 billion in revenue from LSEG and the financial services sector through 10-year strategic partnership.

Today, we announced a 10-year strategic partnership with the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), a world-leading financial markets infrastructure and data provider. Following LSEG’s acquisition of Refinitiv, a market leader in data services, LSEG has differentiated itself in the market with an end-to-end proposition across trading, execution, data and analytics solutions. Together we look forward to empowering the future of financial markets by delivering next generation data, analytics and workspace solutions that transform how firms connect, research, analyze, collaborate and transact across the entire financial markets value chain.

Organizations across the capital markets value chain are facing an increasingly complex operating environment with macroeconomic headwinds, stricter regulatory controls and traditional revenue sources becoming more challenging. These conditions are putting greater pressure on firms to reinvent business models and do more with less. However, their legacy platforms, siloed information, limits on scale and data overload hinder their ability to deliver the best client experience, insights and tools. This requires a digital transformation approach underpinned by modern cloud and AI technology. LSEG has already started to address these issues for their customers, and through this strategic partnership, we will accelerate that transformation.

Additionally, capital markets run on data and by investing in the co-creation of new solutions, we will capitalize on the incremental opportunity we have together and support clients in their transformation.

“This strategic partnership is a significant milestone on LSEG’s journey towards becoming the leading global financial markets infrastructure and data business and will transform the experience for our customers,” said David Schwimmer, CEO of London Stock Exchange Group.

Democratizing financial markets data
Foundational to the partnership will be the digital transformation of LSEG’s technology infrastructure and data and analytics platforms onto the Microsoft Cloud. This will include Refinitiv platforms that power over 40,000 financial institutions in 190 countries with data, analytics and insights across millions of active time series databases, daily evaluations, exchange trades and derivatives, equity quotes and significant research on public and private companies.

With this foundation, we will co-create an open, centralized, financial data platform enabling seamless data democratization, collaboration and new monetization opportunities across the financial services ecosystem. This will unlock new offerings for customers to generate more sophisticated and timely insights.

Delivering next-generation workspace experiences
The financial markets community spends a large part of their day working across multiple terminals and platforms, disparate data sets and siloed analytical tools with limited collaboration capabilities. To enhance productivity and time to value, we will work together to co-create an open all-in-one data, analytics, workflow and collaboration solution that will reimagine client experiences for the first time.

This will be realized through the next generation of LSEG Workspace on Microsoft Teams platform that will support in-application rich experiences for understanding trends and analyzing risk and building scenarios while meeting strict security, privacy and compliance requirements.

Additionally, with enhanced Excel integration, customers will be able to create financial models, run data analytics and visualizations using LSEG content delivered in Excel and work seamlessly between LSEG Workspace and Microsoft 365.

The initial focus will be on delivering interoperability between LSEG Workspace and Microsoft Teams, Excel and PowerPoint with other Microsoft applications and a new version of LSEG’s Workspace, accessed entirely within the Microsoft 365 suite, to be added in the future.

Creating intelligent analytic solutions
Today, firms can experience duplicated costs and complexity in harnessing the full power of analytics to unlock models that garner intelligent insights for business decision making. To address this need, we will work together to co-create next generation analytics and modeling solutions which are cloud-based and will enable powerful model construction, validation, diagnostics and deployment using Microsoft Azure AI, Synapse, Power BI, Excel and Teams with LSEG’s advanced analytics and modeling capabilities.

It will empower investment bankers, traders, wealth and asset managers, as well as risk, compliance, strategy and advisory managers to run hyperscale analytics models against data efficiently and seamlessly. Built on top of Azure Synapse, Azure Machine Learning and Azure Purview, the new cloud-based analytics and modeling solutions will enable users to expose, share and collaborate across proprietary and third-party data securely and confidently, meeting stringent data privacy, security and compliance requirements, eliminating the need to move or copy the data to another location (which can be expensive, time-consuming and introduce security and compliance concerns).

Additionally, quantitative analysts, data scientists and engineers will be able to build custom models to drive their analysis and decision making seamlessly. Both can help organizations spend less time, money and effort building and maintaining their own infrastructure.

“Bringing together our leading data sets, analytics and global customer base with Microsoft’s comprehensive and trusted cloud services and global reach creates attractive revenue growth opportunities for both companies” said David Schwimmer, CEO of London Stock Exchange Group.

Additionally, we will explore the development of digital market infrastructure based on cloud technology, with a goal to transform how market participants interact with capital markets across a broad range of asset classes.

This partnership represents a significant milestone for the future of financial markets and builds on Microsoft’s investments across capital markets and more broadly across the financial services industry. Microsoft estimates this partnership, and broader market opportunity, could generate an additional $5 billion in revenue for the company over the next 10 years, including the $2.8 billion minimum spend commitments from LSEG for cloud services and support.

Microsoft will also purchase an approximately 4% equity stake in LSEG through the acquisition of shares from the Blackstone/Thomson Reuters Consortium.

“We are delighted to welcome Microsoft as a shareholder. We believe our partnership with Microsoft will transform the way our customers discover, analyze and trade securities around the world, and create substantial value over time. We look forward to delivering on that potential,” said David Schwimmer, CEO of London Stock Exchange Group.

To learn more about our partnership, please see the press release. For broadcast-quality footage, please contact [email protected]. To learn more about our work in this space, please visit our capital markets site.

Tags: AI, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Cloud, partnership, Synapse

Microsoft is playing a pivotal role as technology partner for Commonwealth Bank’s newly minted X15 Ventures which has been established to help the bank stay at the leading edge of Australia’s financial services sector.

Over the next five years CBA plans to work with 25 start ups through the wholly owned X15 Venture, creating valuable new services which will be available to its retail and business customers as well as to the broader market. Through the partnership with Microsoft, the start-ups that X15 selects to work with, are assured access to leading edge technology and expertise.

Speaking at the launch of X15 Ventures in Sydney, Microsoft Australia managing director Steven Worrall, said the partnership provides; “Broad access to all of the technologies inside our portfolio – and through direct engagement with our engineering teams, brings not only the best technology, but the best thinking to bear, so that X15 makes the right assessment at that point in time for each portfolio business.

“The sorts of technologies would include artificial intelligence, mixed reality, blockchain and other related technologies.”

He added that; “Our role will evolve – this is a partnership we have had with the bank for over 20 years. This is the latest incarnation of that partnership.”

CBA CEO Matt Comyn is steeped in that partnership having worked closely with Microsoft in the early 2000s when he was part of the team at the CBA which developed the ground-breaking CommSee customer relationship management system.

He noted that then, as now; “Clear digital and technology leadership is critical to the Commonwealth Bank. We see that at the heart of what we want to deliver for our customers strategically and for our people. The organisation is at its best when it is leading and bringing some exciting propositions to market.”

Comyn said that during the development of CommSee the bank worked closely with Microsoft, with bank executives spending time in Seattle, and the then Microsoft CEO Bill Gates visiting the bank in Sydney. “We got a lot of out of that – working with large scale organisations and being able to leverage some of the technology.” He added that he had discussed that partnership further with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in both the US and during his recent visit to Sydney.

Comyn said that X15 Ventures, which has partnered with KPMG High Growth Ventures as well as Microsoft, is now poised to; “Accelerate the pace of innovation for the bank, which is incredibly important. We want to see a dramatic increase in terms of what we can bring to market, benchmarking ourselves against some of the tech companies.”

He said that the creation of X15 Ventures ensured the bank would be far more than a passive investor in start up businesses, instead working closely with entrepreneurs to build and grow their organisations.

Toby Norton-Smith, who has been named as X15 Ventures’ managing director explained at the launch that the company was named in honour of NASA’s X-15 hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft which played a critical role in preparing astronauts for early space missions. In much the same way as the X-15 was launched from a B-52 aircraft which provided it with a 45,000-foot boost, X-15 Ventures has been launched from the Commonwealth Bank to provide it with a boost to tap “next generation solutions”.

As a wholly owned subsidiary, X-15 will have the financial and operational backing of the Commonwealth Bank. The ventures it works will have access to the bank’s financial muscle – but critically also, the opportunity to market their solutions to the bank’s 15 million-strong customer base.

By 2024 X15 Ventures hopes to have signed up 25 organisations, delivered a threefold funds return and signed up 3 million customers for innovative new services.

Trust, technology, transparency

X15 Ventures’ partnership with Microsoft assures its start up businesses have access to leading technology and expertise.

Steven Worrall said; “Perhaps the most important is the provision of a trusted platform. Our key role with all our customers and partners around the world is providing a platform on which they can build digital services that can be trusted, where customers can be assured that their data is secure, and we think that is vital for all of the X15 partners that we will be working with.

“We also bring to the table clarity in terms of our business model – we have no aspirations to be a participant in the payments industry, we don’t see ourselves as participating in the financial services industry more broadly.”

Worrall said that Microsoft was instead committed to continually investing in its digital solutions, security and trust.

The first two start ups which have been embraced into the X15 Ventures fold are Home-In, a service which brings together in one streamlined app, all the services that someone buying a new home would need to access, and Vonto – a free app for small business owners that allows them to bring together in one location all the information they need to run and optimise their business.

According to Comyn the clear intent of X15 Ventures and its industry partnerships is to “See a dramatic increase in what we can bring to market.”

Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) has announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft focused on accelerating LBG’s digital transformation. As part of the LBG’s commitment to invest £3 billion in technology, the new service will provide a modern digital workplace for all Lloyds Banking Group employees.

The new partnership includes the development of Microsoft Managed Desktop, offering productivity tools within Office 365, the robust security capability of Windows 10 and an advanced device solution to support evergreen currency management.

LBG has worked with Microsoft since 2017 to build, test and evaluate the scale, security and agility requirements for Microsoft Managed Desktop. The rollout across the entire business makes it the world’s largest financial services firm to deploy this technology. This is supplemented by LBG’s use of Microsoft Azure to increase business agility, scalability on demand and provide a more enhanced customer offering.

“We are delighted to support this new agreement with Microsoft, which will not only deliver great support for our colleagues, ensuring that we continue to transform our ways of working, but also help improve operational resilience across the Group,” said Jen Tippin, Group People and Productivity Director at Lloyds Banking Group.

John Chambers, Group Chief Information Officer at Lloyds Banking Group, said: “As part of our digital transformation we’re creating a modern digital workplace and I am really excited about the impact of this new technology. A core principle of Microsoft Managed Desktop is the idea that an evolved approach can give colleagues fantastic experiences on workplace devices that stay current and secure with Microsoft 365. We are confident that prioritising a modern and enjoyable workspace will significantly improve our colleague experience.”

“Becoming a truly digital organisation requires both technical and cultural transformation, which is why we believe close collaboration with our customers to understand their unique challenges and determine the best possible solution is critical,” said Cindy Rose, CEO of Microsoft UK. “Using the Microsoft cloud, employees can have the confidence that they have the best tools at hand to deliver an exceptional customer experience and we look forward to continuing our work to ensure Lloyds Banking Group maintains its position as a truly world-class digital bank.”

Tags: Azure, Banking, cloud, desktop, lloyds, microsoft, technology

The drive for transformation
“Change is happening, and there’s a sense of urgency,” says Patrice Amann, Regional Business Lead, Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft. “This industry is under huge pressure, with challengers coming in through several angles. There needs to be a balance between the need for speed, agility and meeting customer expectations on one hand, while meeting regulatory requirements on the other.”

Leading finance influencer Chris Skinner echoes this need for change, describing how banks must evolve with their customers in mind, if they wish to remain competitive. “The law of survival isn’t about being the strongest or the fittest. It’s about being the most adaptable to change – but are you adapting to the right thing?”

While banks are undergoing using technology to transform, some, in Skinner’s words, are lead by bankers, while others are lead by bankers that truly understand technology. In essence, introducing technology simply for the sake of it, isn’t enough.

This is echoed by David Scola, Acting Chief Executive – Americas and UK at SWIFT: “Tech is an enabler, not an endpoint. Lots of people enter the space with a hammer, and view everything as a nail. Innovating for the sake of innovation, simply to say you’ve used it, is not a game plan that we follow.”

Think of some of the banking apps you use. If you want to check if an expected payment has been deposited into your account, or whether or not money has been taken out, you need to check yourself. “Traditional banking isn’t very good,” Skinner elaborates. “They provide you with historical transactions, but no useful information.”

Customer-centric banking means that customers get real-time information such as sending instant notifications for deposits or withdrawals. They also include the location of payments to help detect fraudulent use, as well as offering a statistical breakdown of where your money is spent to help you budget. This is the extra customer-focused features that entice new customers to become loyal ones.

Driven by the cloud
The cloud is a vital foundation of this transformation process, and new players in the banking industry are building their services around the cloud from day one. But what about more established, traditional financial institutions?

“A few years ago, we didn’t see as much of a willingness to adopt the cloud from banks,” Amann states. “When we started this journey with the first-movers, discussions with regulators were more complicated, as it was a new space. Microsoft’s cloud services meet all of the required regulations, and as a result, banks are now proactively coming to us, asking for help in unlocking their innovative cloud capabilities.”

Using services such as the Azure cloud not only ensures that banks are compliant with regulations, but it also offers the ability to scale resources up and down, depending on demand, providing a more reliable service to users than a traditional on-premises solution. This is supported by Nigel Walder, COO, ClearBank, who states that “We couldn’t predict the speed at which our customers would come on board. Thanks to the cloud, it takes us minutes to scale up resources, before scaling down again. This means significant improvements in efficiency, and a reduction in costs.”

Automatic updates which include Microsoft’s stringent privacy protection and cybersecurity services, also allow banks to focus more time on delivering the best service to their customers, without worrying about keeping up to date with regulations and security practices themselves.

One such example is SWIFT, the industry standard and world leader in secure financial messaging services. The company chose Azure services to ensure that SWIFT Cloud Connect achieves the resilience, security, and compliance demands required in the financial services industry. Microsoft is the first cloud provider working with SWIFT to build public cloud connectivity, and has performed its testing with SWIFT by leveraging the Azure Logic Apps service to process payment transactions – a process which now takes weeks, instead of months.

“I think the impact to the end user clients, the typical banking client, is that they get more transparency into their payments,” says David Scola, Acting Chief Executive, SWIFT. “They get greater visibility on what’s happening with them, with the fees that they’re being charged and ultimately with the speed at which those payments are being processed, but also ultimately that they’re as safe and secure as possible.”

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Data and automation
Data is an incredibly important asset, but it needs to be used in the right way to achieve maximum impact. Combining data with automation solutions, for example, can help customers make the best investments to reach their goals.

UBS Partner is one tool that drives this innovation forwards, by enhancing the capabilities of financial advisors. Run on the Azure cloud, it screens client portfolios, identifying whether their investments are on track to meet their individual goals, or whether there are any changes that need to be made. Concrete sell and buy recommendations are then generated, to help keep portfolios on track and improve their likelihood of meeting objectives.

Using the UBS Partner tool’s algorithm, advisors can tailor investments for each person, to help them manage their portfolio and meet their individual investment goals. The end result is a hyper-personalised service which is built around the client’s needs, while freeing up time for financial advisors to spend more focused time with clients.

“When we initially started this at UBS, people thought we were replacing client advisors, but this was not the case,” says William Kennedy, Head of Products, Platforms & Specialists at UBS Asset Management. “We know our customers are looking for advice, and this tool allows advisors to be more scalable, by freeing up their time to focus on clients, while increasing the size of our partners by bringing in new clients. Ultimately, the tool is something that augments – not replaces – the trusted guidance advisors give to their customers.

It’s a transformative time for the financial services industry. In the fast-changing, tech-driven world banks now live in, they recognize that technology can play a role in helping them meet both their customers’ expectations and challenging regulatory requirements. Coming to Microsoft from that world myself just two weeks ago, I’m now leading the team responsible for helping our customers do just that – regardless of where they are in their transformation journey.

After 20 years in financial services, I’ve seen the impact technology can have, and recognize we have been approaching an inflection point for some time – and are at the tipping point.

We’re approaching the close of a decade, and the industry has a tremendous opportunity to accelerate use of cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) as a catalyst to improve competitiveness, drive growth, elevate customer experiences and keep ahead of changing regulations and cybersecurity threats.

To take full advantage of what Sibos 2019 describes as a hyper-connected world, more banks are making broader cloud platform choices – moving beyond infrastructure services – and extending their cloud investment to productivity, data and AI, and agile customer relationship management services.

They’re making this platform decision to seize the opportunity at hand and evolve to meet the rapidly changing needs and expectations of customers. They recognize technology can help them create the new business models required – even integrate past, present and future.

As we look ahead, key to this will be the ability for financial organizations to:

• Deliver differentiated ​customer experience​ by accelerating growth and loyalty through deeper customer insights and relationships ​
• Modernize payments and core banking​ with agility to roll out new products and services​
• Manage risk across the organization​ with deep insights and compliance with regulatory requirements​
• Empower employees​ through teamwork​ and improved employee productivity and accelerate workplace modernization​
• Combat financial crime​ by protecting your bank and customers while lowering compliance costs​

Because of the hyper-connectivity, we know that regulatory compliance is and must be a top priority, which is why Microsoft continues to work with financial services regulators and customers to ensure our cloud services help customers meet their strict regulatory requirements. Our team has been a part of the consultation period in sharing perspectives on updated outsourcing guidance by the European Banking Authority (“EBA)” and the final issued guidance, which takes effect on Sept. 30, 2019.  This longstanding engagement with regulators around cloud computing is one of the reasons more than 90 percent of Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions (“GSIFIs”) depend on Microsoft cloud services. As a company we’ve made the investments and commitments to ensure they can meet their regulatory obligations.

To accelerate digital transformation, Microsoft has focused on removing barriers to adopting cloud technology – such as regulatory and compliance, and beyond. At Sibos, we’re unveiling several announcements to further underscore this effort:

• Microsoft becomes first public cloud provider to enable connectivity with SWIFT Cloud Connect on Azure. Today, we’re announcing progress in our work with SWIFT since last year’s Sibos where we announced the POC to provide SWIFT via cloud on Microsoft Azure. Working with Bank of New York Mellon, Microsoft Treasury has successfully completed payment transaction tests via SWIFT on Azure by integrating with the Bank of New York-Mellon for payment confirmations. In addition, at Sibos we’ll preview two new planned tools to make compliance and cloud adoption easier for financial organizations processing payment messaging in the cloud; Azure SWIFT CSP Blueprint and Logic App connectors for financial services. The Azure SWIFT CSP Blueprint is now available in public preview and will enable fast and repeatable creation of governed SWIFT environments providing continuous monitoring and audit of CSP controls. Azure Logic App Connectors for financial services will enable organizations that adopt SWIFT services on Azure to easily connect their apps, data, and devices on-premise or in the cloud. These offerings will enable more secure and agile operations that will drive cloud adoption for financial institutions that deploy SWIFT on Azure. 
• Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection general availability and new feature addressing wrongful declines: This cloud-based solution will be generally available on Oct. 1, 2019 and is designed to decrease fraud costs and help increase acceptance rates for customer payment transactions with e-commerce merchants. Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection is designed to benefit merchants and banks while also improving customer shopping experiences by providing a seamless purchasing experience. The solution combats payment and account-creation fraud with AI technology that continuously learns and adapts to evolving fraudulent patterns. When generally available, the service will include a new feature (Transaction Acceptance Booster) that addresses wrongful declines – a common issue negatively impacting both merchants and banks. Among the first to deploy the new solution is Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting Group in India to reduce the fraud rate for their ecommerce platform Yardley.com. FMCG players like Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting Group can opt into this feature to increase acceptance rates for authorization requests they make to their issuing banks participating in Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection.
• Microsoft Banking Accelerator adds BIAN API implementation: Following the general availability of the Microsoft Banking Accelerator in July, today we are releasing an API sample implementation on GitHub for interoperability with the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) API service domains. BIAN is a not-for-profit association to establish and promote a common architectural framework for enabling banking interoperability. Microsoft and BIAN have been working together to help unlock new open banking opportunities by allowing organizations to more seamlessly and consistently share banking-specific data across disparate systems. In addition to the BIAN API samples, Microsoft released an update to  Banking Accelerator on AppSource bringing additional use cases for retail banking.
• Microsoft is the first cloud provider to receive a comprehensive cloud assessment from TruSight, an industry-backed, best-practices third-party assessment utility. Today, TruSight delivered a comprehensive on-site assessment of Microsoft’s Cloud Computing environment, including Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. The assessment was conducted using TruSight’s stringent best-practices assessment methodology. The new TruSight report gives financial services organizations a high-quality assessment of Microsoft’s cloud services based on standardized, industry-designed control assessment methodology. TruSight and its third-party assessment utility was created by leading banking institutions for the collective benefit of all financial services participants. The utility gives financial institutions the ability to access assessments on the most widely used third parties across financial services, rather than having to individually conduct assessments. Microsoft is the first of the major cloud providers to complete the assessment, which covered 27 control domains such as information technology, cybersecurity, business resiliency, privacy, physical security and risk management. Visit the Microsoft Trust Center to learn more.

Microsoft customers share their success stories 

Microsoft is focused on empowering financial services organizations to achieve more. That requires being focused on trust, and always enabling our customers – through innovation, and security and compliance investments, as well as industry leading cloud scale. We continue to put our customers at the center of everything we do by sharing their inspired stories from our customers’ success since last year’s Sibos. We see momentum increasing worldwide as our customers tell their transformation stories – answering the questions about how they overcame obstacles, pitfalls to avoid, keys to success, why cloud or AI, and why Microsoft. Here are just a few of their stories:

• Anglo-Gulf Trade Bank, world’s first trade finance bank, hosted entirely on Microsoft cloud
• Bank of New York Mellon, SWIFT and Microsoft turn cloud-based messaging concept into reality during Sibos 2019 Conference 
• Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, SAP, and others trust Microsoft for their digital transformations
• Deutsche Börse and Microsoft reach a significant milestone for cloud adoption in the financial services industry
• HSBC: How HSBC built its PayMe for Business app on Microsoft Azure:Bank-grade security, super-fast transactions, and analytics
• J.P. Morgan and Microsoft announce strategic partnership to drive enterprise adoption of Quorum
• National Bank of Canada empowers and engages workforce, elevates customer and employee experience
• State Street chooses Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Power BI, and Microsoft Teams for Enterprise Investment Management Solution
• TD Bank delivers legendary customer experiences with Microsoft
• UBS Group uses Microsoft Azure cloud to modernize critical business apps, leverage digital channels, and rethink how global workforce collaborates

Microsoft partner news 

At Sibos 2019, we’re excited to showcase our partners’ progress in helping our mutual customers with their technology needs. Microsoft is the only cloud provider with a mature partner program and has the largest partner ecosystem in the market with more than 68,000 partners worldwide. Our partners are equipped and prepared to work with financial services organizations of all sizes across all their needs.

We’re featuring the following partner successes and collaboration efforts:

As the chief information officer for South Africa-based Nedbank Group, Fred Swanepoel recognizes that today’s consumers expect immediate responses to their needs in a 24/7 online world.

“Clients have experiences in other industries that they bring across, and they develop those kinds of expectations of their banks and financial services providers,” he says. “So, if a bank does not innovate along with the speed that clients expect, you will risk becoming irrelevant.”

Technology is at the heart of banking today and is moving Nedbank from being a bank to becoming a digital financial services provider. To make that shift and better serve its diverse client base, the 188-year-old company, which operates in seven African countries (plus 33 more through its Ecobank alliance), is partnering with Microsoft to migrate various operations to the cloud.

The company is using Azure-based compliance technologies to increase data privacy and security in a highly regulated industry. In addition, Microsoft Dynamics applications play a key role in managing customer relationships for the bank.

Nedbank also worked with Microsoft to develop a chatbot named EVA (Electronic Virtual Assistant), an app first used in South Africa that can understand the context of clients’ questions, then answer those questions, provide investment advice and prepopulate forms for investor clients.

“In thinking about banking in the future, we are reimagining client needs and how they will consume banking services,” Swanepoel says.

“Our investment in world-class digital technologies and talent means that we have established an innovative and streamlined IT operating platform that is secure and stable, but most importantly, delivers a convenient and seamless client experience in support of becoming more client focused, more digital, more agile and more competitive.”