Standard Chartered Bank announced on Monday it has formed a three-year strategic partnership with Microsoft to accelerate its plans to become a cloud-first bank. Standard Chartered reported that the partnership makes a significant milestone for its virtual banking, next-generation payments, open banking, and banking-as-a-service efforts.
“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.”
While speaking about the partnership and digital-first banking, Michael Gorriz, Standard Chartered Group Chief Information Officer, stated that cloud is a “cornerstone” of the bank’s strategy to meet the present and future banking needs to its clients.
“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.”
Gorriz further explained in order to realize and meet Standard Chartered’s digital “ambitions,” the bank has selected Microsoft as a strategic partner. Bhupendra Warathe, Chief Technology Officer, Cloud Transformation at Standard Chartered, also noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has “shined a spotlight” on the need for businesses and banks to be resilient from risk mitigation, cost, and security perspective.
“With the increasing trend of an always-on digital economy, commercial and consumer clients are looking for applications and services that empower them to do online banking from anywhere, flexibly and efficiently. The speed and scale of continuous innovation offered by Azure allows us to innovate with the latest AI services to meet evolving client needs.”
Standard Chartered added it will adopt Microsoft Azure as a preferred cloud platform to meet the bank’s need for resilient data centers and cloud services and addressing customers’ security, privacy and compliance requirements across the bank’s global footprint.