Google Cloud, KeyBank and Deloitte have embarked on a multi-year partnership designed to accelerate the bank’s commitment to cloud-first banking.
The collaboration, announced by the companies in a news release Thursday (Feb. 3), will make the Cleveland-based KeyBank one of the country’s largest regional banks to operate its main platforms and applications on Google Cloud infrastructure.
The agreement will see KeyBank migrate its infrastructure to the cloud starting this year, with plans to move most of its products and services there by 2025.
“KeyBank will leverage Google Cloud’s advanced data solutions and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to enhance the bank’s client-first approach with more flexible, personalized digital banking experiences that meet client needs faster and more securely,” the companies said.
For example, the bank will use Google Cloud’s conversational AI virtual agent, Contact Center AI, to offer more natural and accurate interactions to solve client needs, like giving call center agents information about customers’ pending charges and a specific FAQ before they connect.
Deloitte, in its capacity as KeyBank’s systems integrator, will help facilitate and optimize the bank’s move from data centers to Google Cloud.
This partnership is an extension of an early KeyBank/Google Cloud collaboration, as the bank was an early adopter of Anthos, Google’s multi- and hybrid-cloud management platform, and Kubernetes, Google’s open source cloud software solution.
The cloud also helped KeyBank launch its first digital healthcare-focused bank, Laurel Road for Doctors, last year.
As PYMNTS reported at the time, the bank is geared toward healthcare professionals to help them chart a path toward financial health by tackling financial tasks such as paying down student debt and planning for their financial future.
Medical professionals have needs that are fundamentally different than other white-collar professionals, Jamie Warder, executive vice president and head of digital banking at KeyCorp, said in an interview with PYMNTS.
“There’s very few individuals in the world that’ll have $200,000 in debt for their first four years of professional life and only $50,000 of earnings … but after four years jumps to $250,000 in earnings,” he said.
Wayfair has reduced the time needed to curate product listings by 67%, saved hundreds of thousands of dollars and improved some conversion rates by 2% by deploying Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
The online retailer shared these results in a Sunday (Jan. 10) press release emailed to PYMNTS announcing that it is using Google’s Gemini models on Vertex AI to enhance its product catalog and unlock “the next generation of retail experiences.”
“With Google Cloud, we’ve been able to efficiently scale and enrich our product catalogs, enabling us to support a more seamless and engaging shopping experience for our customers,” Wayfair Chief Technology Officer Fiona Tan said in the release.
Gemini on Google Cloud improved Wayfair’s time-to-market by automatically categorizing products across its 30 million product portfolio, delivered cost savings by eliminating the need to manually tag attributes like color and style, and improved conversion rates by increasing the accuracy of product attributes and improving the coverage of attribute tags in the retailer’s catalog, according to the release.
The technology also automatically catches errors in product dimensions and flags inappropriate materials, per the release.
Wayfair is also using Gemini for Google Workspace to boost employees’ productivity, according to the release.
The retailer is using AI features in this suite of productivity apps to draft and respond to emails, summarize and proofread documents, build presentation templates and gain expertise in new areas, per the release.
“By harnessing the power of Gemini and Google Workspace, Wayfair is not only automating complex tasks and boosting employee collaboration, but also creating more personalized and engaging experiences for every shopper,” Matt Renner, president, global revenue at Google Cloud, said in the release.
The rise of large language models (LLMs) has thrust generative AI into the driver’s seat of retail technologies, prompting brands to reassess their strategies, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and AI-ID collaboration, “What Generative AI Has in Store for the Retail Industry.”
The report found that 92% of companies are using AI-driven personalization to drive growth and that 77% of business leaders rank generative AI as the most impactful emerging technology.