Standard Chartered Bank has struck a five-year strategic global agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to run its banking systems and customer facing applications in the cloud.

Standard Chartered said it was collaborating with AWS to drive its digital transformation and deliver new personalised banking services in the bank’s 60 markets worldwide.

The deal follows a three-year agreement signed this August with Microsoft to use its Azure cloud platform as part of its multi-cloud strategy, where core applications will be cloud-based by 2025, subject to regulatory approvals.

The bank said using AWS’ infrastructure and cloud services across its entire business will enable it to be more responsive to customer needs and create new applications through improved resiliency, security and privacy, while meeting compliance requirements across the bank’s global footprint.

Adopting a cloud-first approach, Standard Chartered said it will use AWS services including databases, containers, compute, networking, storage and security, to “reinvent” the digital banking experience, accelerate the design and deployment of new applications and digital services for its individual and corporate clients.

The bank will be using the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) to run applications and quickly introduce new services with the “utmost security, reliability and scalability”. It already uses AWS to run its nexus banking-as-a service solution as well as Mox, its new virtual bank in Hong Kong.

In additiona, Stan Chart's global payments system SC Pay and core banking system eBBS are cloud-native services that use Amazon Aurora, a relational database to store details of banking and e-commerce transactions.

Michael Gorriz, group chief information officer of Standard Chartered, said: “We are improving our operational efficiency and resilience by using best-in-class security, privacy and compliance delivered through cloud infrastructure. We are collaborating with AWS as a long-term strategic cloud provider to take advantage of their broad portfolio and proven expertise.”

The first set of capabilities moving to Microsoft Azure are Standard's trade finance systems, allowing for “seamless” cross-border trade for the bank’s corporate and institutional clients.

The partnership will also advance the bank’s digital workplace transformation with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, providing productivity and collaboration tools to the bank's 84,000 employees worldwide.

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