Intesa Sanpaolo, one of Italy’s largest banks, has invested £40 million in Thought Machine, a core banking tech software vendor from the UK.

As part of the deal, the bank will use Thought Machine’s flagship offering, Vault, to launch a new digital banking service, as recently reported by FinTech Futures.

The new venture, known as Isybank, will initially target four million of Intesa Sanpaolo’s mass-market retail customers in Italy, offering a range of services and contributing towards the group’s structural cost reduction.

According to Thought Machine, Vault was chosen for its flexibility to serve multi-currency and multi-country clients, as Isybank has ambitious expansion plans.

Carlo Messina, CEO of Intesa Sanpaolo, explains: “Our new Business Plan aims to take the fintech challenge head on. This is why we decided to create a new entirely digital bank to serve our younger retail customers, who prefer not to use branches and don’t require the same in-person service that our exclusive, affluent and private multichannel clients do.

“This new digital bank will evolve our retail business from incumbent to fintech challenger in the mass market, with the option to expand internationally.”

Thought Machine says Intesa Sanpaolo “has also indicated an intention to extend Thought Machine’s core banking platform into the group’s wider infrastructure” in due course, aiming to eventually replace mainframe-based core technology with cloud solutions.

Intesa Sanpaolo has approximately 13.5 million customers in Italy, served through its digital and traditional channels, and 7.1 million customers abroad, where it is present with subsidiary banks operating in commercial banking in 12 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Egypt.

It joins other large banks that have signed with Thought Machine to launch new services and invest in the company. These include JP Morgan Chase, Standard Chartered, SEB, and ING.

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• Source: https://www.fintechfutures.com/2022/02/banking-tech-vendor-thought-machine-receives-40m-investment-from-intesa-sanpaolo/