We govern the OCBC Group Technology landscape, aligning with the business roadmaps and defining convergence initiatives to achieve synergies across the region.
GROUP TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURE
Shaping the technology direction of OCBC
introduction
Group Technology Architecture (GTA) is at the forefront of using technology to develop and implement solutions to support OCBC's operations and drive its businesses forward.
From creating and implementing innovative financial products and services, to designing, building and maintaining the company's IT infrastructure and systems, our work is crucial in enabling OCBC to deliver new and improved experiences for its customers.
Our expertise and dedication in pushing the boundaries of possibilities using technology makes us a driving force behind OCBC’s success.
Awards and Achievements
Best Big Data and Analytics Infrastructure Implementation
The Asian Banker - Financial Technology Innovation Awards 2024
Best Anti Fraud Customer Initiative
The Asian Banker - Financial Technology Innovation Awards 2024
Recognition of excellence, Singapore: OCBCX65CHULIA
OpenGov Asia 2024
Recognition of excellence, Singapore: OCBC GPT
OpenGov Asia 2024
Best Future of Work: Digital Office
IDC Future Enterprise Awards 2023
Best Customer Experience – ATM: GovCash via Singpass
Digital CX Awards 2023
Outstanding Digital CX: Mobile Banking (Private Banking)
Digital CX Awards 2024
Singapore Employee Experience of the Year – Banking: MyWorld & HR in your Pocket (HIP)
Asian Experience Awards 2022
Establish architecture governance to drive technology alignment
We define the Technology Governance Framework for the OCBC Group, which includes the development and review of Technology Architecture Standards and Principles, as well as the management of Technology Refresh Plans. We identify and encourage synergies across the Group, educate and communicate architecture governance processes across technology communities.
How do we do it?
- Perform solutions and project reviews to ensure alignment with business roadmaps while optimising reusability
- Drive synergies by leveraging group platforms across entities
- Govern system obsolescence aligning with business criticality and risk appetite
- Refresh technology guiding principles and guidelines
- Govern technology roadmap across entities by ensuring alignment with OCBC Business Strategy
Technology architecture governance drives OCBC Group to advance together
An intentional and structured approach to Technology Architecture Governance is crucial in enabling the Group’s long-term strategy and roadmap across the region and entities. By establishing Guiding Principles, Technology Standards and refreshed roadmaps, Enterprise Solutioning ensures initiatives are aligned, optimised and future-focused.
Alignment
Clear standards and frameworks provide guardrails by aligning diverse entities, teams and technologies to a common set of goals. The aim is to avoid duplication and manage competing priorities across the organisation and across the region.
Optimisation
Limited resources are optimised by taking a coordinated and holistic perspective. Refreshed roadmaps guide investment decisions by prioritising capabilities that drive the biggest impact.
Future-focused
We consider emerging trends and not just current needs. This allows us to pivot nimbly to leverage new opportunities and stay ahead of disruptions.
We drive the modernisation of OCBC Technology Architecture using new cloud native technologies and “building materials” such as microservices to improve agility and speed in delivering business capabilities to the Group.
Revolutionising OCBC through Digital Core and advanced technologies
Modernising our channels and core processing system to provide enhanced multi-channel customer and employee experiences
We work on Digital Core, OCBC's modern cloud native technology platform, by applying architecture patterns such as microservices, API and event-driven messaging to modernise our channels and core processing systems across the Group and its entities.
Some of our award-winning products and services include PayNow, FAST, HR in the Pocket, and more.
Integrating the capabilities from Data and Emerging technologies to complement Digital Core
We complement Digital Core with capabilities from Data and Emerging technologies, providing differentiated and personalised customer and employee experiences, enabling OCBC to implement many industry-first products and services.
We build well-designed data architecture for OCBC through the effective use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
Empowering the world of finance with the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning
Data access
We build a robust data architecture to ensure that data scientists and other AI/ML practitioners have easy access to the data needed to train and serve their models. This involves implementing data lakes and centralised data storage solutions.
Data governance
We establish clear rules and processes for how data is collected, cleaned and used, which is essential for the responsible development of AI and ML models.
Unleashing the power of AI with a solid data foundation
Data integration
We enable the seamless integration of data from a variety of sources within the Bank and externally. This allows AI/ML models to be trained on a wide range of data, improving their accuracy and relevance.
Data transformation
The OCBC Data Architecture team provides a robust framework and structure that allows data to be refined, ensuring that it is suitable for democratisation and AI models. We enable OCBC to scale its AI training workloads by leveraging distributed computing technologies.
Data fabric and data as a service
Data architecture designs the data as a service (DAAS) access layer which allows for a consistent and standard interface for accessing data from different systems and applications including extract-transform-load (ETL) pipelines from data marts.
Unleashing the full potential of data science with a powerful enterprise platform
One Brain and Enterprise Data Science Platform
The Enterprise Data Science Platform (EDSP) is a streamlined platform for data science model development and deployment of AI solutions at scale, which allows OCBC to be agile and responsive to business needs while aligning our AI initiatives with business roadmaps.
Transforming banking with real-time streaming omnichannel experiences
Support the data-driven customer journey experience
By implementing a strong data architecture, real-time processing capabilities and a scalable infrastructure, OCBC ensures that our customers enjoy a real-time streaming omnichannel experience that is seamless, personalised and efficient. These efforts lead to enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty, bolstering efficiency and business profitability. This reinforces our competitive advantage in the marketplace for now and beyond.
Enhanced data-driven decision making
OCBC's data platform processes trillions of records, unlocking tremendous value through analytical AI, which is already a driving force within the Bank. AI is ubiquitously employed, influencing millions of customer decisions daily. From propelling revenue growth to minimising costs and mitigating risks for our customers, AI elevates the customer experience in many ways.
Rapid technological advancements, the rise of digital ecosystem and technology architecture modernisation are reshaping the financial services landscape. In building towards the “Bank of the future”, the Group Technology Architecture (GTA) team identifies new business opportunities, co-creates innovative solutions with businesses and explores ecosystem partnerships in collaboration with industry players. This enables the Bank’s journey towards achieving first-mover advantage and championing our digital transformation goals.
Emerging technology
We explore, identify and incubate cutting-edge technologies to accelerate architecture modernisation, build digital-ready talent and keep pace with the industry.
For example, our successful blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform enables us to build and deploy blockchain-related applications and services. This allows us to fast-track the development of a wide range of blockchain-based products and services by 30%.
Some use cases that our BaaS platform currently support include staff benefits (non-fungible tokens, NFTs), process automation (document verification), security tokenisation (bond fractionalisation) and retail Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs, purpose bound money). By building our foundations and capabilities today, we prepare for the ecosystems of tomorrow.
Fintech & ecosystem
We forge fintech and ecosystem partnerships in collaboration with industry players to unlock value from the new economy and drive digital transformation.
We have jointly curated partnerships across a wide range of applications, including but not limited to supply chain financing, Environmental Social Governance (ESG), digital assets, data analytics, artificial intelligence, rewards & lifestyle and bank technologies.
For example, our partnership with Doxa, OCBC and GuocoLand enables the Bank to digitise the end-to-end payment and procurement process of real estate development projects, all of which were previously manual and paper based. This allows the Bank to handle requests for loan drawdown and project account claims more efficiently.
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