Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services: Create new value with deeper customer connections
Customers and clients rightly put a premium on clarity and ease of communication with their financial services providers. We all want to understand our finances and trust that interactions with our financial institutions are secure, coordinated, and efficient. To drive this outcome, Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services brings together the best of the Microsoft Cloud which includes foundational privacy, security, regulatory compliance, and an industry-specific data model to applications designed specifically to meet the needs of financial institutions globally. In addition, these services and applications are infused with powerful and robust AI, to help drive better decision-making, create more meaningful connections, and produce tangible outcomes.
We continue to invest in improvements to Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services that help financial institutions better manage their data at scale and use it to improve customer experience, coordinate engagement, and drive operational efficiency. These include a new onboarding application, unified client profile for wealth management, new data models, and intelligent appointments, first announced by my colleague Bill Borden.
Building on our platform are new offerings from our ecosystem of industry partners, including independent software vendors (ISVs), Thought Machine and Mambu, that are integrating their banking cores with the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services. Argano’s CX Connect for Financial Services bridges the siloed technical islands of data into a single pane of glass for customers. Bambu and Wealth Dynamix have solutions in the market for wealth management and ASC Recording Insights and BioCatch offer solutions for compliance. For an in-depth look at our partners and their solutions, read the latest from Toby Bowers.
I’m excited to provide an overview of some key features from this release that will have immediate impact for our customers as well as show them in action.
Improving the customer journey
Intelligent appointments
Customers appreciate 24/7 access to their data as well as the ability to communicate and schedule time with advisors. Intelligent appointments provide customers a self-service experience to book time with an advisor. Financial institutions can offer flexibility by allowing the customer to choose how and when they want to meet with their financial service provider.
The scheduling experience easily and quickly matches the availability, relevance, and skills of the customer’s financial needs advisor. Scheduled meetings are automatically synchronized to participants’ calendars. Customers are also informed about appointments through SMS and email to streamline the process and ensure relevant materials are prepared ahead of time.
Onboarding application
From onboarding to retention, customers expect their financial service journey to be a connected and efficient process. Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services provides new in-market solutions to improve communication and equips representatives with pertinent customer details to streamline service.
The onboarding application (preview United States and the United Kingdom only), enables financial institutions to orchestrate financial onboarding processes through a transparent and flexible experience. It allows for customized data collection tasks per business scenario and defines the application document journey. Visual user interface components consolidate and help users visualize the onboarding process. With access to primary applicant details, additional parties’ details, and application task summaries, financial advisors can more effectively engage with customers. Additionally, the document verification process can be accelerated and automated by incorporating document intelligence AI analysis to verify all onboarding application documents.
Extending to additional verticals with new data models
The wealth management and property and casualty insurance data models (preview in the United States and the United Kingdom only) are both standalone options for partners and Microsoft Dataverse customers to extend Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services solutions. The small business data model is an extension to the retail banking data model. These data models help financial institutions quickly take advantage of the benefits of Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services and accelerate time to value. These out-of-the-box components are also aligned with Azure Synapse Database templates, offering financial institutions and partners an even greater opportunity to bring innovative experiences to their customers.
Providing a unified client profile
Financial advisors seek to offer personalized investment guidance to their clients based on a deep understanding of their needs and goals. The unified client profile for wealth management (preview in the United States and the United Kingdom only) provides a 360-degree view of the client, offering insightful, easily consumed data to help drive more productive client-advisor conversations and better outcomes. A high-level summary view provides client details, life moments, investment portfolio, financial holdings, and household finances and allows the manager to create client connection groups. Managers can easily capture relationships between contacts based on an expandable option set.
The client snapshot provides an at-a-glance view of the customer, with key information to start a conversation in the customer’s preferred communication channel. For a more comprehensive view, financial goals can be added to life events, helping wealth managers to assess appropriate and relevant financial advice. Wealth advisors also have access to their client’s investment portfolios allowing them to better understand the ownership structure, value, performance, and allocation by asset type.
Compliance program and new markets
Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services now offers the full value of the Compliance Program (generally available) for Microsoft Cloud, providing customers with white-glove support for risk, audit, and compliance challenges. Organizations can connect with subject matter experts for support in understanding risk to help accelerate cloud adoption. This program has exclusive features such as ask an expert, risk and control mapping, a compliance community, and proactive risk assurance.
We are also expanding to Brazil, Hong Kong, and Singapore with the addition of Brazilian, Portuguese, and traditional Chinese to our list of supported languages. Learn more about our current list of countries and supported languages.
Learn more
To learn more and stay informed, visit our Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services website. Find the latest on current release plans at Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services | Microsoft Learn.
