Banking is one of the most data-intensive industries in all of business. Data stores are vast and dizzyingly complex. As their data volumes grow exponentially, financial services firms face significant data challenges. Their systems must manage ever-increasing workloads that prepare, clean, process, store, and curate data. Legacy infrastructure and data platforms cannot keep up.

And as the data estate becomes more complex, it can be difficult to effectively deploy machine learning models and data science initiatives. At the same time, banks need to stay ahead of a constantly changing landscape, from business disruptors to always-evolving regulatory and compliance demands.

Client spotlight: Driving results at a major European bank
One of the leading European banks wanted a way to better evaluate the risk of default when issuing credit to customers – a factor that helps determine loan terms and conditions. They also wanted to deploy machine learning models and data science initiatives more easily, moving legacy systems and processes to the cloud.

Avanade delivered a better way to ingest and analyze customer credit data from multiple data sources, including financial statements and Know Your Customer data. We also built a cloud-based risk calculation engine to analyze customer credit data alongside macro-economic data.

As a result, the bank can now process credit and regulatory data far faster, while dramatically improving overall data quality. The Databricks Lakehouse Platform replaced dozens of legacy systems, removing complexity and speeding machine learning and data science to other areas of their business.

At banks, the risk landscape is always changing
If you’re like most banking leaders, you are likely exploring all options while embracing continual change and mitigating risk to their business. At your bank, you likely face multiple risks of varying complexity, including:

• Operational risk: loss resulting from cybersecurity breaches or inadequate or failed internal processes, people, controls, and systems
• Compliance and legal risk: when a bank falls short of regulations, including Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering, they can face fines and penalties
• Liquidity risk: a bank's ability to meet its obligations could threaten its bottom line
• Market risk: losses due to factors that affect the overall performance of investments in the financial markets
• Model risk: Developing standards for AI/ML model development, assessment of AL/ML model risk and support model implementation
• Credit risk: Any risk associated with financial transactions that include company loans in risk of default
• Cloud migration risks: Mitigating the risks with migration to the cloud and cloud security
• Environmental, Sustainability, Governance risk: a broad range of potential threats to a bank’s business, from climate change impacts to workplace safety and mitigating corruption.

A new approach to managing risk for banks
You can mitigate threats to your bank by standardizing and simplifying risk management across business lines. That’s why Avanade created the Risk Management Brickbuilder Solution, an approach built on Azure Databricks tailored for financial institutions that helps them mitigate risk in a rapidly changing risk environment. You can stay ahead of risks by continuously monitoring potential risks at enterprise scale and providing decision-makers with the predictive intelligence they need to correct course. Databricks Lakehouse helps ensure reliability, governance, and flexibility of a modernized data estate, ensuring opportunities for scale and innovation in the future.

Put simply, our Risk Management solution helps banks:

• Improve data quality and analysis
• Simplify their entire data estate
• Provide agile and comprehensive views of financial risks

As you work to accelerate digital transformation efforts at your bank, the Avanade Risk Management Brickbuilder solution can speed initiatives to deploy machine learning and data science. To accelerate the onboarding of data to the Databricks Lakehouse Platform, Avanade deploys the Metadata-Driven Data Management Framework, which automates and speeds data ingestion from disparate data sources.

The Risk Management solution is just one of Avanade’s industry-specific solutions built on the Databricks Lakehouse platform. We’re proud to be a foundational partner for the recently launched Databricks Brickbuilder program. We will soon launch additional Avanade Brickbuilder solutions to solve problems unique to additional vertical industries – watch this space for updates.

Interested in learning more about our Risk Management solution? Connect with us here.

Connect with Avanade at Databricks Data + AI Summit 2022
Avanade is a proud platinum sponsor of our partner Databricks’ flagship conference, the global Data + AI Summit 2022. Our team will be on-the-ground in San Francisco, spotlighting client success stories and showcasing Avanade Brickbuilder solutions. Watch this space for updates on our conference sessions and find our booth in the expo hall to connect with our executives.