HFS Highlight report - PwC & Microsoft further cloud-native digital banks with their ecosystem offering

The HFS Highlight report looks at how PwC productizes an ecosystem-led, cloud-native digital bank offering with Microsoft and its new Cloud for Financial Services.

In this report, HFS highlights that, ‘Banks want to be digital. However, corralling all the myriad tech, people, and process components leads to multi-year projects or, even worse, piecemeal whack-a-mole strategies that spiral out of control. Banks, whether new or established, need to make rapid progress through transformation in today’s challenging environment. 2022 heralds the rise of the ecosystem orchestrator and a path forward to cloud-native digital banks. PwC and Microsoft are tapping into this.’

It goes on to say that “Back in November PwC expanded its partnership with Microsoft offering a “global digital banking solution.” HFS has written, public cloud continues to gain traction in banking and financial services, but it’s workload driven. This offering thinks bigger.”

The report mentions that, ‘The offering provides a single-source digital bank. PwC is the prime contractor, which we should promptly re-christen as “ecosystem orchestrator,” bringing its digital banking expertise to design, build, integrate, and ultimately run the digital bank … Microsoft is bringing its vetted and trusted array of partners (all are part of the Microsoft partner network), its full product suite optimized in various solutions for banks, and, of course, its Cloud for Financial Services.’

Mark Moffat, Partner, CTO and UK & EMEA Technology Consulting Leader, PwC UK said: ‘Industry solutions powered by cloud technologies enable a fundamental shift in capabilities as organisations look for speed and agility in delivering and running new technology platforms. At PwC we are proud to be bringing together our depth of industry experience with our strategic alliance partnerships, to orchestrate the development of industry cloud solutions that provide a step change in the ability for organisations to provide fully digital customer and colleague experiences.’ 

HFS observe, ‘PwC and Microsoft have curated a set of trusted fintech partners in several categories that collectively comprise the necessary elements for a digital bank. The ecosystem is meant to offer modularity and flexibility based on client preference, jurisdiction, and need.’

In HFS’ view, ‘This bold offering from PwC and Microsoft heralds the rise of the ecosystem orchestrator role, curating the elements and expertise required to rapidly build a digital bank. This digital bank offering from PwC and Microsoft is designed to drive massive improvement in time to value and the extensibility of digital banking growth and expansion. The orchestrated ecosystem approach holds huge de-risking potential for firms willing to roll the dice and embrace the curated approach.’ 

John Lyons, Partner, EMEA Technology Leader, PwC UK said: ‘By leveraging the huge investments in Industry Cloud technology by the likes of Microsoft and their fintech ISVs, we are able to quickly develop innovative digital platforms for our Financial Services clients. We use our global network to bring together the best of these leading technologies coupled with our industry experience in areas such as customer, risk, cyber, regulation, culture and beyond, to deliver real results.’

Click here to read the HFS Highlight Report

Contact us