As a number one monetary group in Spain, CaixaBank has lengthy been an innovator by taking a technology-first method by putting innovation, digital transformation, buyer expertise and sustainable banking on the forefront of its technique. The financial institution reportedly serves 20 million clients and is a rustic chief in digital banking with greater than 11 million clients.
For years, the financial institution has been a part of IBM’s rising ecosystem of monetary establishments and expertise 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 vital it’s to scale securely, enhance operational effectivity and speed up time to market to optimize digital banking experiences—all whereas safeguarding clients’ 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 setting. Moreover, IBM Cloud’s operations within the MZR in Madrid, Spain makes use of a community of information 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 may be difficult to combine new platforms and functions shortly and seamlessly, particularly with rising 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 clients want?
CaixaBank focuses on enhancing the flexibleness, scalability, and effectivity of its IT infrastructure, an method which allows us to enhance value effectivity, probably 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 data 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.
With regards to infrastructure, we all know any system downtime has real-world penalties and prices. Throughout an integration course of, knowledge may be in transit in a number of locations, finally making it susceptible to fraud and different refined cybersecurity schemes. Cybersecurity pressures will all the time be current, and subsequently, monetary establishments want the best ecosystem of companions to seamlessly assist navigate these challenges and construct trusted platforms and companies which can 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 gives the built-in safety and compliance controls for us to host functions and migrate mission vital 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 opponents. 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 a lot of transactions in an open, secured, and scalable setting. To perform this, we have to proceed to keep up the 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 do not forget that simplicity means making choices simpler for our clients, which results in producing extra engagement with them.
Our collaboration with IBM has helped us mix our present technological infrastructures with an up to date setting 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 equivalent to serving to financial institution workers shortly acquire related detailed details about new consumer choices and helping cellular clients through chat with day-to-day queries.
The IBM Cloud Multizone Area (MZR) is a key milestone to maintain providing our clients the very best consumer expertise we will, whereas sustaining the best ranges of data 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 expertise and methods groups to assist facilitate the attraction and retention of inner 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 reasonable. How is CaixaBank mobilizing sustainability efforts to assist its shoppers transition to a sustainable and low-carbon economic system?
CaixaBank has roots in delivering social impression for the good thing about society by its mission in serving to clients enhance their monetary well-being. The financial institution has developed a Sustainable Banking Plan, which incorporates proposals to resolve sustainability challenges equivalent 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 charge has elevated by 27%, from €18.53bn in 2021 to €23.58bn in 2022.
The financial institution has additionally set the objective of decreasing 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 an entire account for 70% of worldwide emissions.
CaixaBank views cloud as a priceless asset in accelerating sustainability transformation. Unification of the financial institution’s devoted personal clouds can be serving to the financial institution not solely scale back working prices and work in a extra agile approach, but in addition enhance its vitality effectivity.