Microsoft reaches out to financial regulators around the globe to ensure that its offerings are compliant, and does so on a regular basis. However, the company did not respond to a general request for information issued by the Office of the Comptroller last year, and so far remains mum on a similar request from five U.S. regulators issued earlier this month.

The software giant contacts regulators across the globe to share information, particularly regarding cloud technology, on behalf of its financial services customers, and to understand regional differences in rules, said Bill Borden, corporate vice president of worldwide financial services at Microsoft.
“As our customers look at using our systems and capabilities, in particular as they move to the cloud, they’ve got to build things in a way that can be controlled, proven and auditable so that regulators will allow them to move mission-critical applications to the cloud, and data to the cloud,” Borden told Bank Automation News on Thursday.
Microsoft announced earlier this year its plans to expand into financial services with a new cloud for financial services offerings. Microsoft’s cloud for financial services includes several tools that will help banks automate and digitalize, including its pre-built Loan Manager, which the company said can automate the lending process, and an automation that brings information from diverse systems to a call center, then ensures the data carries forward if the same customer calls again.
Cloud for financial services also uses artificial intelligence (AI) for advanced analytics, as well as a common data model and tools for both professional developers and citizen developers. These technologies allow the system to incorporate financial, behavioral and demographic data in one unified customer view, according to a company press release.
Borden said these services, currently in a soft launch stage, will be generally available “soon,” but did not offer a specific date for their release.
Borden also could not say whether Microsoft would respond to the request for information issued earlier this month by the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA). Regulators have asked 17 questions about the use and safety of AI, machine learning and other emerging technologies in financial services.
Read what banks and technology companies are telling the OCC about AI and regulations.
“It depends on what’s asked, how it’s asked, if we see something that we need to weigh in on heavily,” Borden said. “That’s how we make our decisions around what information we share. But we tend to be very active with wanting to participate, either formally or informally, with regulators.”
Shares of Microsoft [NASDAQ: MSFT] were trading up at $260.74 as of market close, up .49% from market open. The company has a market capitalization of $1.97 trillion.
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