African financial services provider, Nedbank announced on Monday, 2 September 2019, that it has partnered with Microsoft in a move to become a ‘digital-first’ financial services provider. The bank is set to migrate components of its IT infrastructure to the cloud, making it the first bank in the country to run operations of this scale in the cloud.
According to Nedbank, the partnership forms part of its 2020 digital transformation vision as well as its three-lane digital strategy – this focuses on running the business (Digitise), transforming the business (Delight) and disrupting the business (Disrupt).
It’s noted by the company that the choice to partner with Microsoft as its digital transformation partner is because of the culture fit and alignment between the two companies as well as Microsoft’s proven ability to effectively manage large organisations’ needs in the cloud.
Nedbank Group Chief Information Officer, Fred Swanepoel says, “Transformation is a complex journey, so it is critical to choose partners with a cultural fit, which Nedbank and Microsoft enjoy. It’s also important to partner with someone you can trust to not only protect your data and its privacy but to deliver the world-class service you require. Nedbank believes that financial services providers that get digital right will be more successful at traversing an uncertain future.”
Nedbank will utilise all three of Microsofts’ clouds – the Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365.
Microsoft South Africa Managing Director, Lillian Barnard says, “Microsoft is extremely proud of our ongoing partnership with Nedbank in their digital transformation journey. Moving these components of the bank’s IT infrastructure to Microsoft’s cloud represents a critical next step in that journey, and we are excited to see how this will add value in driving Nedbank’s ambitious growth strategy”.
“Banks have an intelligent role to play in advising their clients how to optimise their finances, and digital transformation can help achieve this by creating operational efficiencies and enabling agility and flexibility to deliver cutting-edge solutions and client-centric banking. Microsoft values being able to partner with a forward-looking financial services provider like Nedbank to drive this change,” concludes Barnard.
Edited by Jenna Cook
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