A Japanese Mega-Bank’s Journey to a Modern, GenAI-Powered, Governed Data Platform

SMBC-AD, a major Japanese multinational financial services institution, has embarked on an initiative to build a GenAI-powered, modern and well-governed cloud data platform on Azure/Databricks. This initiative aims to build an enterprise data foundation encompassing loans, deposits, securities, derivatives, and other data domains.

Its primary goals are:

• To decommission legacy data platforms and reduce data sprawl by migrating 20+ core banking systems to a multi-tenant Azure Databricks architecture
• To leverage Databrick’s delta-share capabilities to address SMBC’s unique global footprint and data sharing needs
• To govern data by design using Unity Catalog
• To achieve global adoption of the frameworks, accelerators, architecture and tool stack to support similar implementations across EMEA

Deloitte and SMBC leveraged the Brickbuilder asset “Data as a Service for Banking” to accelerate this highly strategic transformation.