Techcombank partners with AWS in cloud migration

• Techcombank has partnered with AWS to move to the cloud
• Financial institutions in Southeast Asia are increasingly migrating core financial services to the cloud
• There is a shift in regulator attitudes towards new technologies

More than 90% of Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank) customers are using digital channels at least once a month, with roughly 34% of customers using digital channels exclusively. It is therefore crucial to offer more relevant products to be able to serve customers better. The bank’s decision to move to the cloud is part of the previously announced $500 million technology investment over the next five years.

Techcombank partners with AWS to move to the cloud

Vietnam’s Techcombank is moving its services to the cloud to enhance customer experience and promote innovation in the country with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a partner. In the five-year partnership, AWS will support Techcombank with setting up and accelerating innovation and digital talent development programmes. These programmes are intended to help the bank respond efficiently to customer needs and provide solutions faster to the market, thereby differentiating it from other players in the market. “The move towards the cloud will enable us to develop products and services much faster, generate insights much better, and develop very personalised services, which we can create very unique and better experiences,”said Jens Lottner, CEO of Techcombank.

The bank will move the majority of applications to the cloud including their core banking system. Starting from the easy, non-critical applications to the modern technology systems such as loan organisation systems, underwriting systems, as well as the regulatory pieces, such as anti-money laundering monitoring and fraud management systems. “Overall, of the probably about 30 core applications, we have started to unbox the first three to see how things work. We started with easy, non-critical ones, and then start getting into an area where it gets more complicated,” added Lottner.

Furthermore, Techcombank is leveraging AWS training programmes including AWS Skills Guild, a comprehensive skills development programme designed to build cloud fluency across the bank’s workforce. Training offers live classes with instructors who will help upskill 2,000 participants. The technical training will be available for all staff working closer to the cloud migration and will cover intermediate to advanced topics including architecting, developing, machine learning and security.

Migrating core financial services to the cloud

In Southeast Asia, banks are increasingly migrating their core financial services workloads to the cloud and embracing the cloud to harness the untapped power of their data and turning data into insights. Conor McNamara, manager director of AWS in ASEAN, explained, “We’re committed to Southeast Asia as a growing geography for us. We just launched Amazon Connect, which is our call centre, the cloud offering in Thailand with local title language. We’re constantly investing in localising our various AI and machine learning services for the various local ASEAN languages. The other big thing we are doing is investing in curriculum, back to the skills point, transforming curriculum board certification programmes and the various education programmes in local language”.

Digital transformation pathway in Vietnam through the National Digital Transformation Programme by 2025 is one of the key drivers of the cloud service market in the country. Its goal is to go digital and explore new technologies and business models. With the cloud service market expected to expand, Techcombank has set the goal to lead the industry in cloud adoption with high reliability and performance. It was able to increase its customer base to 8.9 million, with half a million newly added customers in first quarter of 2021. It recorded a significant growth of 94.5% in transactions to reach 296.9 million via e-banking channels. Upgrading its technology platform is aimed at bringing further growth in customer transactions and additional applications.

Shift in regulator attitudes towards new technologies

The regulators’ main concern is the stability, reliability, safety and the way data are used. After becoming more open towards cloud and other new innovative solutions that can bring positive change, there has been a shift in regulatory attitude towards the use of cloud and other technologies, as well as the use of customer data. Lottner noted that Techcombank is working closely with regulators throughout the whole process. He said, “We explained the tokenisation, masking and all of that to make sure that the data moving overseas are not personal identifiable information”.  

Security is one of the key concerns. Having a secure AWS platform requires investment in training and leveraging of the right resources coupled with a partnership with financial services, regulated institutions and collaborative intellectual property around the world. Data moving across borders also require high security and established procedures and protocols. “AWS Outposts enables applications that need to run on premises or to meet local data storage needs. It is an extension of the AWS region, but it is physically located on the customer’s premises,” added McNamara.

AWS started offering cloud-based services to businesses in 2006. The solutions help businesses to manage up to thousands of servers in minutes and deliver results faster. It provides reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses in more than 100 countries around the world.