As a number one monetary group in Spain, CaixaBank has lengthy been an innovator by taking a technology-first method by inserting innovation, digital transformation, buyer expertise and sustainable banking on the forefront of its technique. The financial institution reportedly serves 20 million prospects and is a rustic chief in digital banking with greater than 11 million prospects.
For years, the financial institution has been a part of IBM’s rising ecosystem of economic establishments and know-how companions leveraging IBM Cloud for Monetary Providers to assist ship extra improved buyer companies and merchandise higher tailor-made to every particular person buyer’s monetary wants. CaixaBank is constant its initiative to extend cloud absorption. With reporting greater than 200 billion transactions on the finish of 2022, CaixaBank understands how important it’s to scale securely, enhance operational effectivity and speed up time to market to optimize digital banking experiences—all whereas safeguarding prospects’ knowledge.
This week IBM opened the doorways to our newest Multi Zone Area (MZR) in Madrid, Spain, designed to assist European firms speed up their modernization journey. The MZR will help ship resiliency, efficiency and safety to assist shoppers leverage hybrid cloud and AI options in a secured surroundings. Moreover, IBM Cloud’s operations within the MZR in Madrid, Spain makes use of a community of knowledge facilities backed by 100% renewable electrical energy.
We spoke with Pere Nebot, Chief Data Officer of CaixaBank, on how IBM Cloud has served as a catalyst for digital transformation because the financial institution strives to combine simplicity into its innovation to construct services and products that financially empower its shoppers.
The digital transformation journey could be difficult to combine new platforms and functions rapidly and seamlessly, particularly with growing safety complexities and evolving regulatory and compliance requirements. How can monetary establishments overcome these challenges to construct trusted and established digital manufacturers that ship the experiences that prospects want?
CaixaBank focuses on enhancing the pliability, scalability, and effectivity of its IT infrastructure, an method which allows us to enhance value effectivity, doubtlessly diversify outsourcing, scale back time-to-market, enhance timing of variations, and develop into extra resilient.
For instance, the financial institution efficiently and reliably accomplished the biggest technological integration within the historical past of the Spanish banking system with its merger with Bankia in 2021 – all with none service interruption. This was a milestone that concerned the migration of 10.4 petabytes of knowledge in lower than 24 hours, and the digitalization of greater than 2,500 million paperwork, in addition to setting a capability to handle as much as 29,000 transactions per second.
In relation to infrastructure, we all know any system downtime has real-world penalties and prices. Throughout an integration course of, knowledge could be in transit in a number of locations, in the end making it susceptible to fraud and different subtle cybersecurity schemes. Cybersecurity pressures will at all times be current, and due to this fact, monetary establishments want the fitting ecosystem of companions to seamlessly assist navigate these challenges and construct trusted platforms and companies which might be past the boundaries of a standard financial institution. These companions should even be compliant because the monetary companies trade is inundated with stringent regulatory legal guidelines. Leveraging IBM Cloud for Monetary Providers offers the built-in safety and compliance controls for us to host functions and migrate mission important workloads within the cloud with confidence and enhance operational efficiencies to supply seamless and frictionless buyer experiences.
We view the subsequent chapter of digital transformation as harnessing the mixed energy of hybrid cloud and AI to assist drive progress and efficiency in an trade panorama rife with new and nimble digital rivals. How is CaixaBank leveraging each applied sciences to efficiently combine and execute simplicity into innovation?
CaixaBank and IBM have been working collectively for over a decade to assist drive new options for the banking trade with a objective of accelerating velocity for processing numerous transactions in an open, secured, and scalable surroundings. To perform this, we have to proceed to keep up the very best ranges of operational effectivity to efficiently ship an ecosystem of merchandise, companies and hyper-personalized experiences tailor-made to every buyer’s monetary wants. You will need to keep in mind that simplicity means making selections simpler for our prospects, which ends up in producing extra engagement with them.
Our collaboration with IBM has helped us mix our present technological infrastructures with an up to date surroundings that helps evolve core enterprise functions with cloud and synthetic intelligence. We developed one of many first digital banking assistants created in Europe. Constructed with IBM Watson, the AI-based digital assistant manages hundreds of thousands of consumer conversations every month, dealing with duties comparable to serving to financial institution staff rapidly get hold of related detailed details about new consumer choices and helping cell prospects by way of chat with day-to-day queries.
The IBM Cloud Multizone Area (MZR) is a key milestone to maintain providing our prospects the perfect consumer expertise we will, whereas sustaining the very best ranges of knowledge confidentiality and safety.
CaixaBank’s IT firm, known as CaixaBank Tech, additionally serves as a key enabler for digital transformation. CaixaBank Tech incorporates most of CaixaBank Group’s specialised know-how and programs groups to assist facilitate the attraction and retention of inside and exterior expertise.
Monetary establishments and its stakeholders have centered extra consideration on local weather change, thrusting sustainability necessities much more firmly into the highlight. Sustainability methods have to be impactful and real looking. How is CaixaBank mobilizing sustainability efforts to assist its shoppers transition to a sustainable and low-carbon financial system?
CaixaBank has roots in delivering social affect for the good thing about society via its mission in serving to prospects enhance their monetary well-being. The financial institution has developed a Sustainable Banking Plan, which incorporates proposals to unravel sustainability challenges comparable to inequality, local weather change and unemployment.
CaixaBank goals to mobilize €64 billion in sustainable finance by 2024, together with financing and progress in mutual funds, pension plans and sustainable intermediation. Within the first 12 months of the plan’s life, the mobilization price has elevated by 27%, from €18.53bn in 2021 to €23.58bn in 2022.
The financial institution has additionally set the objective of lowering the electrical energy holdings in its portfolio by 30%, and absolutely the emissions financed by the oil and fuel sector by 23% by 2030. Presently, these two sectors as a complete account for 70% of world emissions.
CaixaBank views cloud as a priceless asset in accelerating sustainability transformation. Unification of the financial institution’s devoted non-public clouds can be serving to the financial institution not solely scale back working prices and work in a extra agile approach, but additionally enhance its vitality effectivity.
