CaixaBank, a leading financial institution in Spain and Portugal with 15.5 million customers to boast of, announced an agreement focused on technological innovations with IBM (NYSE: IBM). The coming together of two giants in their respective sector would energize the bank’s capabilities to develop innovative, digital first solutions enhancing customers experience and fast track its hybrid cloud journey.
With more than 6.5 million digital clients and as the leading digital financial service provider in Spain, the collaboration would revolve around new solutions for the banking industry. Delivering improved customer experience and processing a large number of transactions in a secure, open and scalable environment. Another aspect of the agreement cements working with IBM in their joint innovation center directed towards the application of advanced technologies like AI, exploration of quantum computing and blockchain solutions.
A strategic technology partner of CaixaBank since 2011, IBM renewed their existing relationship and the recent ones are focused on digital transformation and innovation, this strengthens the longtime collaboration between the bank and IBM. With the use of AI based virtual assistant powered by IBM Watson, CaixaBank also makes its presence felt among the pioneering banks when it comes to the application of AI in financial services sector. The use of virtual assistant that manages 1.5 million conversations per month on varied issues, right from new client offerings information for employees to responses on queries for mobile customers via chat, allows the bank to allocate more time to serve customers.
CaixaBank can now modernize and create applications with increased agility and security while addressing compliance requirements within a hybrid cloud environment by leveraging IBM Cloud Pak. IBM expertise and experience in the financial industry would create long term value for CaixaBank. “We are pleased to be on this digital transformation journey with CaixaBank, an innovation leader in the banking industry,” said Juan Zufiria, Senior Vice President, Global Technology Services.
The agreement charts a more favorable open cloud environment for innovation, agility that would lead CaixaBank to provide flexible and secure digital services to customer. CaixaBank will leverage IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, designed to reduce risk and improve operational resiliency, running on Red Hat OpenShift to manage workloads and applications across its overall cloud infrastructure. Its storage capacity of 105,000 terabytes and processing power equals 200 times the volume of a digital library will increase processing capacity and data storage capabilityof the bank.
New projects for the joint innovation center include the expansion of quantum computing and blockchain. Researchers at the center have been exploring futuristic technologies for the financial services and recently developed a prototype machine learning algorithm based on quantum computing to analyze customer credit risk.
Expressing his views on the agreement signed during IBM’s Q1 2020, CEO of CaixaBank, Gonzalo Gortázar said “Our company, the leader in digital customers in Spain, has renewed our relationship with IBM to allow us to continue innovating and transforming the way we interact with our customers.”
About CaixaBank
With a leading position in retail banking in Spain and Portugal, CaixaBank is a financial group with a socially responsible, long-term universal banking model, based on quality, trust, and specialisation. It offers its customers the best tools and expert advice to make decisions and develop habits that form the basis of financial well-being. The parent company CaixaBank S.A shares are traded on the stock exchanges of Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Bilbao is a part of the IBEX 35 since 2008.
To know more, visit: www.caixabank.com
The Media Bulletin (TMB) is a diversified publisher and a digital media service company. Consistently at the forefront of innovation and technological advancement, TMB endorses digital technology to provide unique experiences to its audience through news, objective-oriented research and articles, and industry expert commentary.
