Nationwide Building Society has completed a project to cut the number of data stores it uses from 19 to one, using Microsoft technology as part of its integration of Virgin Money.
The use of Microsoft Azure and Azure Databricks will enable the organisation to get more out of its artificial intelligence (AI) investments.
Since chief data and analytics officer Sri Kanisapakkam joined Nationwide in 2023, his team have been working on the challenge, and now complete, there is one “accessible” data platform, according to Nationwide.
“We wanted one unified platform that serves all of the data to the society in one place, on one technology, on the cloud,” he said.
This was critical as the use of AI accelerates. “AI is not magic,” said Kanisapakkam. “It needs to understand how your data is organised and how your data is structured. The data has to be trusted first before you can say your AI is trusted.”
On top of replacing a 45-year-old customer data system, Nationwide, which serves around 19 million members, has already moved 15 million customers off its former core banking engine, and is preparing to integrate around five million Virgin Money customers, according to Paul Ballard, Nationwide’s chief technology officer.
Merger of types
Nationwide’s takeover of Virgin Money, first proposed in 2024, set the wheels in motion for a company that had gone through multiple technology integrations in recent years to integrate into a well-established digital strategy.
Nationwide plotted its future technology in 2008, when it announced an initial £1bn investment in IT to create a foundation for the future. Over the same period, Virgin Money has been through two major acquisitions – with the associated integration projects.
Virgin began life as a basic financial service with Norwich Union, but since acquired Northern Rock for £747m in 2011, and was acquired by Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank Group for £1.7bn in 2018.
The proposed £2.9bn acquisition of Virgin Money, the biggest banking takeover since 2008, will see Nationwide take on more than 7,000 staff, and create the UK’s second-biggest mortgage and savings company. It will also see the Virgin Money brand disappear over time.
Ballard said the next phase will see the building society work with Microsoft technology to create agents that can talk to its systems.
The building society is increasing investment in cloud suppliers to support its AI plans. In January, it announced it is using a cloud platform from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that offers AI capabilities to support its digital innovation and improve member experiences.
It extended an existing agreement with the cloud giant to include broader services, including staff training. The service, Amazon Connect, is cloud-based, and aimed at contact centres, offering AI-powered tools to support both branch and contact centre operations.
AWS began heavily targeting the financial services sector a decade ago, and has transformed its offering in line with a changing sector.
Some 10 years ago, the promise of unlimited computing power on a pay-as-you-go basis was a huge differentiator. AWS, as well as a few of its tech hyperscale competitors, enabled this, but today, AWS is more than a pipe into a customer tech engine.
Its latest “billion-dollar” investment, known as Forward Deployed Engineering, sees it embed generative artificial intelligence experts in its financial services user bases.
