New Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services features accelerate transformation for wealth management
Today we’re pleased to announce the availability of a set of new features, enhancements, and preview updates for Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services that will deliver new capabilities for wealth management firms, banks, and other financial institutions as they drive new product innovation and process improvements.
For wealth management firms in particular, the mandate to embrace a “digital-first” strategy has never been more urgent. The competitive landscape is rapidly changing, as a new generation of clients demands new, highly personalized experiences. In the race to become the hub for all things financial, fintechs and non-traditional players have already changed the face of the industry with personalized client engagement models and new partnerships across the ecosystem.
In response, wealth managers need to quickly pivot to focusing on the client experience rather than on products. The challenge is significant for institutions with monolithic legacy infrastructures and more traditional customer bases. They need to innovate rapidly to meet clients in new ways through scalable, differentiated omni-channel solutions. That puts new demands on technology teams who need to do more with less, often with their budgets cut.
This is where the cloud comes in—and where the choice of cloud provider is essential. “Cloud has become a critical technology for institutions across all lines of business in the financial services industry,” says Jerry Silva, vice president for IDC Financial Insights. “But institutions need more than just the infrastructure to ensure the transformation to a scalable business. Institutions need to work with providers that can supplement infrastructure with industry-specific data frameworks and rich partner ecosystems to fulfill the promise of a digital future.”
Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services
Discover how Microsoft is driving innovation in financial services.
Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services empowers wealth management firms and other financial services providers to implement the right digital strategies for their businesses. By bringing together the best of the Microsoft Cloud and solutions from our global partner ecosystem, Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services enables the delivery of personalized financial solutions at scale to all customer segments while also elevating the client experience. We do this through a combination of foundational privacy, security, and regulatory compliance, plus an industry-specific data model for applications designed to meet the specific needs of financial institutions globally.
Today’s announcement represents progress across several important fronts.
New features for wealth management
With today’s announcement, and building on our October 2022 release, we’re accelerating the value of our cloud for geographies and languages previously announced. Two new features for wealth management, now generally available, expand our investment across industry verticals:
- A new wealth management data model. We’re delivering an extension to the banking data model for wealth management that captures new attributes including financial goals and investment instruments specific to wealth management. This will power the development of new applications specific to wealth management scenarios and enable our partner ecosystem to plug in with their own vertical solutions.
- Unified client profile (UCP) for wealth management. This will foster deeper client relationships by delivering meaningful advice—for example, providing relationship managers with a deeper understanding of a client’s financial status, investment portfolios, financial goals, important life moments, and other personal attributes. This is a variation on the UCP feature for retail banking.
Customer experience updates in preview
To meet customers’ expectations and provide exceptional customer experiences, financial service providers must continuously enhance their offerings by creating stronger connections among people, processes, and systems. This requires a commitment to ongoing improvement in delivering the seamless and efficient services that customers expect, especially at the crucial points of intersection where customers or clients engage with the financial institution for the first time.
To further support our customers in this important endeavor, we are happy to announce the following preview updates for customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia:
- Onboarding application toolkit updates. We’re adding automated workflows, including a document intelligence feature that extracts key data from customer-submitted documents such as official identification required for onboarding scenarios. This also includes a new application queue feature and improvements to the application task manager that enables the cancellation of tasks.
- Intelligent appointments integration with Microsoft Teams Virtual Appointments. This enables the creation of a unique, branded, end-to-end experience for virtual meeting scenarios in Microsoft Teams (Teams Premium subscription required for some capabilities).
Additional enhancements
Finally, we’re announcing the following additional enhancements to our cloud:
- Landing zones. For both Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Power Platform, these are pre-configured, industry-specific architectures that speed time to value and reduce risk in Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services deployments (no subscription to Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services required).
- Australia, welcome to our previews. We’re delighted to welcome Australia to the list of countries participating in our previews. Our Aussie customers and partners join the United States and United Kingdom to accelerate cloud onboarding and facilitate additional customer feedback on product development.
And a wealth of partner solutions
Overall, today’s news represents an important continuation of our cloud journey for financial services. It also reflects the growing momentum and importance of our partner ecosystem, which is critical to delivering integrated solutions and support for customers. There are now 75 solutions available for our customers to use in extending the value of Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, all from leading systems integrators (SIs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) from around the world. Some of our partners in this ecosystem include Accenture, ArganoArbela, ASC, Avanade, Avtex, Backbase, Bambu, BaseCap, BioCatch, Capgemini, EY, Finastra, KPMG, Mambu, Mortgage365, Publicis Sapient, PwC, Seismic, Thought Machine, VeriPark, Wealth Dynamix, and Zafin, who develop joint solutions built on our platform that deliver differentiated customer experiences, empower employees, and manage enterprise risk.
Together with our partners, we will continue to invest in improvements to Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services so that financial institutions will better be able to manage their data at scale and use it to improve the customer experience, coordinate engagements across stakeholders, drive greater operational efficiencies, and develop new products and business models.
Learn more
There’s more to come, so watch this space. You can always get the latest on Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services at our website. To find the latest on current release plans, visit Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services | Microsoft Learn. And to learn what our cloud can do for your business, get in touch with your Microsoft representative or trusted partner.
