In 2023, financial institutions continued to look to third-party vendors for innovative solutions to enhance their offerings. 

A December report by Scottdale, Ariz.-based bank and fintech advisory company Cornerstone Advisors of Arizona said U.S. banks are most eager to partner in the following three areas: 

• Payments and money movement; 
• Fraud and risk management; and 
• Mobile wallet.  

Throughout the year, these banks teamed up with fintech providers to boost their offerings: 

• In May, Fifth Third Bank acquired an embedded payments company Rize Money. 
• In September, NatWest selected Amazon Web Services for the tech giant’s generative AI; and 
• In November 2023, Citi tapped cloud-native security service provider Akamai Technologies to fight fraud.

The following banks looked to third-party providers in Q4:

Ally Financial collaborates with Microsoft to leverage OpenAI 

Ally Financial is tapping Microsoft Azure’s generative AI model, OpenAI, internally to reduce manual customer service tasks. 

OpenAI will allow Ally’s call center representatives to produce detailed documentation for each call rather than taking notes, freeing up time to engage with other customers, according to Ally’s Dec. 21 release. 

“As widespread adoption of generative AI began in early 2023, we were already thinking about the best way to use the technology to support our teammates and our business,” Ally Chief Information, Data and Digital Officer Sathish Muthukrishnan said in the release. 

Ally has already deployed generative AI for document processing and to assist its marketing team in providing customized campaigns, Muthukrishnan previously told Bank Automation News.  

The $196 billion bank has created an AI playbook that helps employees conceive and develop AI use cases, he said. The Detroit-based bank aims to launch one gen AI-driven feature each month in 2024, he said. 

The AI efforts continued in the first quarter, the bank selected another AI-driven vendor to work with: LangChain, a data, large-language-model company. 

Ally chose LangChain to deploy an AI model that can help developers working with sensitive personal identifiable information (PII) to remain compliant. 

The tech provider’s PII masking model helps organizations working with sensitive consumer data to mask the information when it is transported from the user access point to the company’s servers, according to LangChain’s release. 

“We see so much opportunity in the power of generative AI for our business, and we use LangChain to get to production quickly,” Muthukrishnan said. “The Ally.ai platform allows our team to spend more time with customers while also being more efficient than ever before.” 

BNY Mellon invests in wealth tech company Alpheya 

BNY Mellon and in Abu Dhabi-based investment bank Lunate invested an undisclosed amount in a wealth tech company Alpheya, in November.  

Alpheya offers end-to-end digital solutions for client onboarding, wealth management, portfolio management, risk management and more, according to a BNY release. 

“We look forward to leveraging our local industry and investment expertise with BNY Mellon’s long history in wealth technology solutions to help wealth managers in the Middle East meet the evolving needs of their clients,” Seif Fikry, managing partner at Lunate, said in the release.

Visit Bank Automation News’ Transactions Database, which lists the technology selected or acquired by companies in the financial services industry, with a specific focus on technology that enhances automation.

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