Emirates NBD Building Artificial Intelligence-enabled Bank of the Future with AWS

One of the largest banking groups in the Middle East to accelerate
digital innovation using AWS’s breadth and depth of functionality to
build personalized retail banking experience for customers

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com
company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced that Emirates NBD, a leading bank in
the Middle East, is collaborating with AWS to create a culture of
innovation within the bank and is using AWS machine learning (ML)
services to build a personalized retail customer banking experience.
Emirates NBD will also utilize AWS data analytics, Internet of Things
(IoT), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and other advanced
technologies as part of its ongoing efforts to better engage with
customers and simplify banking.

A front-runner in retail banking innovation, Emirates NBD is working
with AWS because of its broad and deep portfolio of cloud services and
the increased security and control Emirates NBD can achieve in the
cloud, and is continuing to invest in AWS as its preferred provider for
machine learning workloads. With AWS, Emirates NBD will take further
advantage of AWS artificial intelligence and machine learning services
including Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed machine learning service for
building, training, and deploying machine learning models to provide
relevant real-time banking experiences.

To create a more rewarding and customer-centric banking experience,
Emirates NBD is also leveraging Amazon Personalize, an AWS machine
learning service that enables the development of individualized
recommendations to launch new personalized retail banking applications.
One of the first of these applications is a personal finance manager
that uses an automated, self-learning system to deliver a highly
personalized banking experience to customers in order to predict what
each individual customer needs and match this with the most appropriate
solution. The system also utilizes Natural Language Processing
technology so customers can interact with call center automation in a
more natural way. To support this work, Emirates NBD is using Amazon
Polly, a cloud service that uses advanced deep learning technologies to
convert written content into human-like speech, in its automated call
center to further enhance customer interactions by delivering lifelike
voice banking experiences. As part of Emirates NBD’s journey with AWS,
it is also exploring how to better serve customers at bank branches with
convenient and secure authentication, leveraging AWS’s image recognition
and IoT solutions.

“Our vision is to be the Middle East’s most innovative financial
services organization and to achieve this we have chosen to work with
the world’s most innovative technology company, Amazon Web Services,”
said Suvo Sarkar, Senior Executive Vice President and Group Head –
Retail Banking & Wealth Management at Emirates NBD. “Emirates NBD and
Amazon share common values of innovation and customer centricity and we
look forward to leveraging AWS’s technologies and innovation practices
to make banking more easy and intuitive for our customers.”

“Across every industry, companies are starting to meaningfully use
machine learning in their businesses, and AWS offers the broadest and
deepest portfolio of machine learning services to help them solve some
of their biggest challenges. We are excited to see how these
technologies are helping transform the financial services industry in
the Middle East and around the world,” said Andy Isherwood, Managing
Director, Amazon Web Services EMEA. “Emirates NBD is one of the most
valued and innovative financial institutions in the Middle East, and we
look forward to continuing to support them as they embark on a journey
to transform how they serve their retail banking customers and build
their organization into a bank of the future.”

About Amazon Web Services

For 13 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most
comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 165
fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking,
analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI),
Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and
augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development,
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customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises,
and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure,
become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

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About Emirates NBD

Emirates NBD is a leading banking Group in the region. As at 31st March
2019, total assets were AED 525.8 Billion (equivalent to approx. USD 143
Billion). The Group has a significant retail banking franchise in the
UAE and is a key participant in the global digital banking industry,
with over 90 per cent of all financial transactions and requests
conducted outside of its branches. The bank was declared the Most
Innovative Financial Services Organization of the Year at the 2017 BAI
Global Innovation Awards.

The bank currently has 234 branches and 1076 ATMs and SDMs in the UAE
and overseas and a large social media following, being the only bank in
the Middle East ranked among the top 20 in the ‘Power 100 Social Media
Rankings’, compiled by The Financial Brand. It is a major player in the
UAE corporate and retail banking arena and has strong Islamic Banking,
Global Markets & Treasury, Investment Banking, Private Banking, Asset
Management and Brokerage operations.

The Group has operations in the UAE, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and representative offices in
China, Indonesia and Turkey.

The Group is an active participant and supporter of the UAE’s main
development and community initiatives, in close alignment with the UAE
government’s strategies, including financial literacy and advocacy for
inclusion of People with Disabilities under its #TogetherLimitless
platform. Emirates NBD Group is a Premier Partner and the Official
Banking Partner for Expo 2020 Dubai. For more information, please visit: www.emiratesnbd.com

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