Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services hit the market Monday, boasting a list of partners that offer integrations, including digital banking platform provider Backbase.

Microsoft’s software and computational strengths coupled with partner integrations and the extent of data interoperability could offer advantages for financial institutions with the tech giant’s new financial services cloud platform.

Banks need a more “platform-oriented model” they can use to advance their customer interactions and experiences cost-effectively, particularly given the advanced competition they face today, said Jouk Pleiter, co-founder and chief executive of Backbase. He discussed how the new platform will help banks of all sizes modernize and stay competitive during a webinar last week prior to the release. Founded in 2003 in Amsterdam, Backbase was recently named as a top digital banking vendor in a study by Aite-Novarica Group.

“I think the No. 1 problem is that banks are very siloed,” Pleiter said. “It’s very hard for them to really streamline customer interactions, especially when they have to compete with big platforms like the fintechs, the Apples and the Googles.”

Many banks’ systems have been accumulated piece by piece over time and data often isn’t interoperable across them, he said, suggesting that the Microsoft cloud platform and its partner integrations will offer an advantage.

“The key differentiator here is that it’s not just a bunch of logos where you still need to do a lot with integration,” Pleiter said of the platform. “It’s all about bringing together these companies that are really committed to make these different capabilities work seamlessly together, simply end-to-end” in a more unified technology stack, he added.

The cloud platform will make it more cost-effective for banks of all sizes to digitize their services “and compete with the big guys,” Pleiter said. “This will help banks to compete for speed and to basically transform their operation into a platform for their operating model,” he said.

The $147.9 billion Navy Federal Credit Union, which has been recognized for its customer experience, is another MS Cloud platform user.

“We’re partnering with Microsoft to define and implement a holistic [customer relationship management] strategy, which includes a lot of requested resolution processes and flows and also has member interaction lifecycles captured in one platform for our member service representatives to support our member base,” said Phani Damaraju, Navy Federal’s CRM platform lead.

“The Microsoft ecosystem has been supporting us in realizing all those capabilities for our members,” he noted. Damaraju explained that employees at the Vienna, Va.-based credit union have required collaborative back-office tools and a “360-degree view” of members’ needs, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.

“We’ve had a disproportionate increase in calls to our call centers where it has added an additional burden to our systems,” Damaraju noted. “In order to meet some of those challenges, we have an overall CRM strategy where we want to build a relationship which is data-driven, which is cloud-native and at the same time, provides Navy Federal with the scale and resiliency to meet our member expectations so we can sustain our membership growth.”

In addition to Backbase, Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services partners include:

• Accenture/Avanade, whose customer acquisition and retention solution is based on the Microsoft Dynamics 365, Azure and Power BI platforms;
• Avtex, which offers a consumer experience (CX) solution based on Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Marketing and Customer Insights;
• BaseCap Analytics, which offers its Data Quality Management Platform via the Microsoft cloud;
• Capgemini, which has a bank employee collaboration solution that is surfaced within Microsoft Teams;
• EY, whose know your customer (KYC)/anti-financial crime solution deploys on Microsoft’s cloud platform;
• Finastra, which offers its Fusion Phoenix banking core built entirely on Microsoft technology;
• KPMG, whose customer risk analytics/regulatory compliance solution utilizes Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services;
• Mortgage365, whose digital lending solution is built on Microsoft Power Platform and Azure;
• Publicis Sapient, whose mortgage origination solution is built with Microsoft Teams and Power Platform technology;
• PwC, which offers its customer data platform as well as risk compliance, secure analytics and other apps on the Microsoft platform;
• Veripark, whose VeriTouch customer relationship management solution is built on Microsoft Dynamics 365; and
• Zafin, which offers a software-as-a-service dynamic banking product and pricing solution via the Microsoft cloud.

Digital and core banking solutions from Miami-based Technisys also are Microsoft preferred solutions. Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer German Pugliese Bassi echoed Pleiter’s point about the cloud platform’s partners, saying the tech giant’s offering “introduces powerful capabilities that come from the unveiling of a new and robust partner ecosystem.”

Fully utilizing these cloud services, he told Bank Automation News, can allow financial institutions “to elevate the customer experience, streamline operations and tailor products dynamically — all while uncovering new revenue streams.”