Malaysian lender Maybank has entered into a strategic partnership with Microsoft, to accelerate its digital transformation journey and reinforce its commitment in enhancing customer experience.

This will see Maybank adopting Microsoft’s collaboration suite, cloud, artificial intelligence ( AI ) and security capabilities to drive customer centricity, enhance operational agility and foster a culture of continued innovation.

This partnership is for a value of approximately 1 billion ringgit ( US$235.7 million ) over five years, which would include upgrade of existing capabilities to Microsoft 365.

At the heart of this partnership, the bank will adopt Microsoft Azure as one of the main cloud platforms for some of its most strategic systems, functions and data workloads. This move provides the lender with “a state of the art scalable, resilient and secure foundation, enabling real-time data analytics, faster deployment of new services and significant operational efficiencies”. 

To further amplify productivity and intelligence, the lender will rollout Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI assistant tool, for  all its 44,000 employees to offload complex tasks from them. The tool will also enable employees to innovate further and drive improvement in the overall customer experience, in efficiency and effectiveness of operations. 

The partnership also involves leveraging Microsoft’s advanced security tools. The bank will enhance its existing cybersecurity posture with the software provider’s solutions and ensure robust data protection. 

As well, the partnership will explore the establishment of a centre of excellence for both companies to collaborate on developing cloud and AI-powered innovation, and in nurturing in-house talents in these areas.

“This strategic partnership with Microsoft is a leap forward in our digital transformation journey beyond our M25+ strategy,” shares Sri Khairussaleh Ramli, the bank’s president and group CEO. “It’s not just about technology; it’s about thinking ahead on how we can better serve our customers, improving our ways of working, and accelerating innovations.

Mayank Wadhwa, Micosoft’s Asean president, adds: “By embedding intelligence into the core of financial services, Maybank is transforming how it serves its customers while setting a powerful example for the industry across Asean ( Association of Southeast Asian Nations ).