How 6 big banks are leveraging the AWS cloud

Large financial institutions have moved beyond using Amazon Web Services (AWS) for infrastructure, expanding into machine learning (ML), text extraction and other technologies offered by the tech giant. [caption id="attachment_220357" align="alignright" width="300"] Image by CanStock[/caption] More than 2,700 new services or major features were announced in 2020, John Kain, AWS’ head of worldwide business & market development efforts for banking and capital markets, told Bank Automation News . “It's certainly more than just infrastructure,” Kain said. Six major financial institutions are leveraging AWS’ cloud-based services for automation and rapid scalability for technology-related initiatives, Kain recently shared with BAN . JPMorgan Chase The $3.7 trillion JPMorgan Chase built its own Omni AI platform on top of AWS in order to detect fraud and create data for clients and customers using artificial intelligence (AI) and ML capabilities, Kain said. “They actually were using it as a firmwide platform to help with automation,” he added. “So it was everything from credit risk to real-time call center kind of recommendations, where they're actually using those conversations and machine learning to actually tailor advice that their call center operators are giving their customers.” The bank is investing in the cloud in other ways: In September, it announced the replacement its U.S. retail core banking suite with cloud-based technology from U.K. fintech Thought Machine. The bank’s cloud strategy involves both public and private cloud, according to Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum. The shift to the cloud will allow the bank to batch processes — which typically run overnight — to real-time processing, Barnum said during last month’s earnings call . AWS also offers SageMaker, an ML platform that JP Morgan Chase and other firms leverage to “build out their own data science capabilities, from an enterprise perspective, giving them the ability to manage those inbound datasets, audit them and tie them into how they're using machine learning platforms from a modeling perspective, and then manage how those actually get out to production,” Kain explained. This allows the big bank and others to use AWS services, such as security, trend analysis, translation, sentiment detection and automatic data extraction from documents, Kain added. Barclays Managing call center demand was a challenge for $1.8 trillion Barclays , which decided to “aggressively” move its call center from on-premise infrastructure to Amazon’s managed call center platform, Kain said. “They were able to move 25,000 operators over the course of under three months because they saw that, as the pandemic hit, they were going to need much more flexibility in their infrastructure,” he said. “Suddenly, that traditional call pattern that they had in prior years wasn't going to be the same, as everyone had to work from home and couldn't access the branch infrastructure.” Barclays was also able to leverage other cloud-based tools, such as Amazon’s Alexa platform, which Kain said is basically an automated chat. It also incorporates ML services that can perform sentiment analysis, he said. HSBC Financial institutions like $3 trillion HSB C are modernizing their mainframe cores by placing application programmable interface (APIs) around the mainframe, then moving some components off the mainframe to web-based services to speed user experience, Kain said. “They’ve got a mainframe core they're going to leverage for a while, but they'll actually stream data off that core into AWS to do real-time messaging for their customers,” he said. “Whether that's something as simple as an overdraft alert, or more complicated like, ‘Oh, I see you're outside the country, would you like to purchase some travel insurance?’ they have the ability to take the transaction information that's on their mainframe, and yet still do the advanced analytics that the cloud is so well positioned for.” BBVA During the pandemic, BBVA moved approximately 86,000 employees from its offices to remote settings. Employees used Amazon AppStream 2.0, a managed desktop and application service, to remotely access work, Kain said. “They had to have suddenly an infrastructure that scaled across their global employee set that to be able to support their customers. They were able to take advantage of a service of ours called ‘App Stream’ that allowed them to securely stream down applications to their customers, giving them the ability to support securely their customers, without interrupting their business,” Kain said. “And the ability to do that, in such a large scale, is ideally designed for cloud.” BBVA was acquired for $11.6 billion by the $553.5 billion Pittsburgh-based PNC in June. Standard Chartered Standard Chartered has been an AWS customer since 2015. During the early days of the pandemic, the $789 billion bank moved its risk infrastructure to the cloud, allowing it to run models on what credit risk looked like as its customers’ employment profiles changed, Kain said. Capital One Capital One is a “marquee” customer that has worked with AWS for six years, Kain said. The $425.4 billion bank migrated its data center infrastructure to the cloud, allowing a “move to a more dynamic infrastructure.” The bank made the move in order to reach its customers through a variety of digital channels while offering personalized advice and services, he added.

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