Lloyds Bank Partners with Google to Drive Cloud Transformation

Need to Know 

• UK bank Lloyds Banking Group is working with Google Cloud to streamline cloud-based offerings.
• Lloyds Bank is investing nearly $4 billion in digital transformation in an effort to win customers and accelerate tech development.
• Banks around the world are turning to cloud providers to migrate banking platforms, especially ones that interact with consumers.

Analysis

Lloyds Banking Group is partnering with Google Cloud to improve the banking brand’s digital evolution and streamline its cloud-based customer service offerings. This recent announcement is a part of the bank’s nearly $4 billion investment in a digital transformation. 

The new contract will make Google the host for Lloyds’ customer data and will involve transferring existing customer information over to Google Cloud data centers over the next five years. Google Cloud experts will also collaborate with Lloyds to enhance their engineering practices, in an effort to improve efficiency and innovation in services for the bank’s retail and commercial customers.  

Lloyds Banking Group is the largest digital bank in the UK with around 26 million customers actively managing their accounts online worldwide. The 250-year-old bank manages over £436 billion in assets. 

“As the UK’s largest digital bank we have made strong progress in transforming not only our systems, but also how we work,” said Zaka Mian, group transformation director for Lloyds.

“The size of our digital transformation is huge and Google Cloud’s capabilities will help drive this forward, increasing the pace of innovation, as well as bringing new services to our customers quickly and at scale. This collaboration gives us a strategic advantage to continue as a leader in banking technology.”

Lloyds Banking Group is dedicated to improving its digital banking assets, committing to “spending more on digital transformation than the entire amount of money invested in the UK Fintech sector last year alone.” 

Following the American mortgage crisis of 2008 that affected the economy worldwide, the UK bank, which was bailed out by the government, is focused on balancing the books and restoring customer confidence by transforming the group for “success in the digital world.” 

“While we have delivered best-in-class experience to our customers, we need to constantly evolve to meet their changing behaviors and expectations. Customers increasingly want greater personalization, more connected and seamless experience, but with higher security and safety in the online environment. They want simpler products with greater convenience and ease,” explains Antonio Horta-Osorio, CEO of Lloyds.

Lloyds Bank isn’t alone in this expectation, as more and more banks continue to evolve to address customers’ ever-changing expectations for digital functionality. 

Deutsche Bank has also requested bids from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon for cloud-based services, signaling an upcoming digital overhaul for another worldwide banking leader. TD Bank is using Microsoft Azure for its cloud-based services and Goldman Sachs has recently partnered with Apple to improve its digital offerings. 

Google Cloud is an industry leader in modern computing infrastructure, working with customers in over 150 countries around the world.