May 2024: Top five fintech partnership stories of the month
The month of May saw no shortage of industry partnerships, collaborations and joint initiatives. Here, we’ve selected five of the top fintech partnership stories of the month, featuring OpenAI, BBVA, CIBC Mellon, Avidbank, Duco and more.
Franklin Templeton partners Microsoft to build “advanced financial AI platform”
Franklin Templeton partners Microsoft
Investment management firm Franklin Templeton announced it is partnering with tech giant Microsoft as it looks to build and deliver an “advanced financial AI platform” for its employees and clients.
The platform will leverage Microsoft’s Azure AI service suite as part of its development, including the suite’s OpenAI service and corresponding GPT-4 large language model, as well as its AI Search and AI Document Intelligence functions.
Franklin Templeton says the partnership will enable it to rapidly embed AI into its processes with the aim to improve the productivity of its sales and marketing teams and offer “more personalised support” for its clients through the consolidation and simplification of structured data and contextual financial information.
“The platform will use a multi-layer intelligence approach, where individual AI capabilities can be synchronised to create an advanced level of intelligence for our business,” explains Deep Srivastav, head of AI at Franklin Templeton.
Lloyds Banking Group collaborates with Red Hat to adopt modern open source engineering practices
Lloyds Banking Group is collaborating with US-based open source solutions provider Red Hat to enhance “developer experience, software quality, and speed to market” through the efficient adoption of InnerSource practices.
The new partnership is being driven by Lloyds Banking Group’s Open Source Program Office (OSPO), a unit within the bank tasked with developing and implementing an open source strategy, supplying internal training and tooling, and overseeing collaboration with external organisations.
OSPO has turned to Red Hat to support its adoption of InnerSource practices, which entails leveraging modern open source practices for in-house tech development and implementation, with the goal to “maximise business value” from the banking group’s engineering teams.
Together, the two companies state that they are developing InnerSource frameworks to help “standardise contributor roles and streamline processes, improving efficiency and product quality”.
CIBC Mellon taps Duco for AI-powered data automation tech
CIBC Mellon partners Duco
CIBC Mellon has partnered with UK-based Duco to implement AI-powered data automation technology into its asset servicing platform.
Founded in 1996 as part of a joint venture between Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) and BNY Mellon, CIBC Mellon provides asset servicing solutions for banks, pension funds, foreign insurance trusts and other institutional asset managers.
CIBC Mellon will now adopt Duco’s no-code data automation capabilities to help the firm “manage data effectively while reducing operational risk and improving client experience”, according to CEO Mal Cullen.
“By harnessing AI-based automation, CIBC Mellon ensures that its processes are exception-based and sustainable in the long run,” Cullen says.
Avidbank partners Corserv to launch commercial credit card programme
Avidbank in the USA has tapped Corserv to launch a new credit card offering for its commercial clients.
The bank will utilise Corserv’s Account Issuer solution to support card issuance, processing, servicing and programme management.
With a focus on serving Avidbank’s commercial business, municipality and non-profit customers, the partnership seeks to deliver a wider range of credit card products, including virtual cards, as well as functions for expense reporting, spending controls and transaction insights.
Anil Goyal, CEO of Corserv, says that the features will “enable Avidbank to meet the banking needs of the smallest to the very largest of these customers”.
BBVA partners OpenAI to deploy ChatGPT among its employees
Spain’s BBVA partners OpenAI for ChatGPT
Spanish banking giant BBVA has partnered with ChatGPT developer OpenAI to distribute generative AI tools among its workforce.
The Bilbao-headquartered group says that it has now started to deploy 3,000 ChatGPT Enterprise licenses among employees operating its central services in Spain. It also states it intends to extend licences to employees in the group’s other “main countries” in due course.
According to a statement, BBVA says its deployment of the technology seeks to “increase productivity and process efficiency, while stimulating innovation across the group”.
“The aim is for all areas and departments to have access to ChatGPT, so that licensed employees can collaborate with their colleagues in undertaking various projects,” the group says.
