Eastern Bank to improve efficiency and customer service with modular banking platform powered by Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services

Meeting customers where they are

Since its founding in 1818, Eastern Bank has aimed to help the communities it serves prosper. In its early days, that meant making financial services accessible to everyone. Today, Eastern Bank continues that practice by offering access to fairly priced financial products and services and helping to build thriving communities, such as financing the development of affordable housing, and supporting businesses and nonprofits with a range of financial products, including through its Eastern Wealth Management division and Eastern Insurance Group subsidiary. 

To continue to meet the changing needs of customers, Eastern Bank is committed to evolving its leading-edge technology solutions. “Customers are more digital than ever, which means we need to provide robust, digital experiences that meet them where they’re at,” says Don Westermann, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Eastern Bank. 

The bank built an operational platform a decade ago, but with the current pace of emerging technologies and changing customer needs, Eastern Bank knew this legacy solution should evolve. As a creative solution, the bank built an API layer on top of the platform to easily enable the digital apps and services customers wanted. Recognizing this solution would also reach its limits, Eastern Bank sought technology that was both flexible and scalable. The aim was to create more customized and targeted experiences for its customer base, while reducing costs and converting employee focus to the customer experience. “We sought a solution that would simplify internal workflows, product experiences, and product designs, as well as speed up customer interactions and deliver a great experience for our customers, a solution that could evolve and grow with us," says Westermann. 

Rapid deployment, scalability, flexibility

 To help create a new platform, Eastern Bank chose Dutch company Backbase, a Microsoft Cloud Partner Program member with expertise in helping banks modernize their legacy systems. Typically, when banks undergo digital transformation, they require several updates to technology stacks and layers, such as customer engagement, employee productivity and processing, and cloud infrastructure layers. Backbase simplifies this process by offering pre-integrated capabilities through a unified engagement layer that easily connects into existing core banking systems. 

Eastern Bank and Backbase plan to build a flexible and modular banking platform powered by Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services and Power Platform. This new architecture will include adding innovative features to the existing core, while creating high-touch experiences and leveraging UX capabilities to drive further personalization and customer value. Backbase offers out-of-the-box components that can be tailored for specific customer journeys, while Microsoft provides a secure and compliant cloud-based infrastructure that enables interoperability and speed via an end-to-end, cloud-based operating model. “We look forward to bringing together all areas of the business under one roof with Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services. This will help us work more efficiently as a company and better support our customers,” says Westermann. The new platform will also include Microsoft Teams for seamless employee communication. 

With Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, Eastern Bank gets an industry-specific, cohesive set of cloud solutions for unified customer data and more personalized experiences. Power Platform provides data analysis, process automations, and the ability to build apps, websites, and virtual agents to drive innovation and reduce costs. “With Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services and Power Platform, we’re looking to gain a flexible, scalable, and simplified solution for better customer engagement,” says Westermann. 

Staying future-ready and adaptable

 The move to the cloud will help Eastern Bank achieve its goals of driving personalization, creating operational efficiencies, and empowering an excellent customer experience. The bank anticipates the new platform will help improve processes in retail and operations and enhance customer interactions, giving employees more time to focus on building differentiated and innovative customer experiences and relationships. 

“We’re excited to work with Microsoft and Backbase on this solution. We think it will make our already strong engagement levels with customers and employees even stronger and keep our overall operations future-ready and adaptable,” says Westermann.

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