The bank has signed a five-year strategic global agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to drive its digital transformation and deliver new personalized banking services in the bank’s 60 markets worldwide.

Using AWS’s infrastructure and cloud services across its entire business will enable the bank to be more responsive to customer needs and create new applications, Standard Chartered said in an announcement on Thursday.

Standard Chartered will adopt a cloud-first approach and use the whole range of AWS services, including database, containers, compute, networking, storage, and security, to reinvent the digital banking experience, as well as accelerate the design and deployment of new applications and digital services for its individual and corporate clients, the announcement said.

Apart from enabling the bank to be more agile and client-focused, cloud infrastructure enables operational efficiency and resilience by using the best-in-class security, privacy, and compliance, Standard Chartered said. The bank's core banking system, eBBS, global payment system, SC Pay, as well as digital bank Mox and banking-as-a-service solution «nexus,» are already cloud-native using AWS services. 

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«Adopting a cloud-first approach makes our vision for next-generation financial services – like virtual banking, next-generation payments, open banking, and banking as a service – a reality,» Bhupendra Warathe, Standard Chartered's chief technology officer, cloud transformation, said. 

Standard Chartered previously announced a three-year strategic partnership with Microsoft to accelerate its digital transformation through a cloud-first strategy, which includes adopting Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform for its data centers and the use of Microsoft tools to advance digital workplace transformation.

Earlier this year, AWS also signed a multi-year, global agreement with HSBC to accelerate the use of the cloud in its operations.