Lombard Odier, a private Swiss bank founded in 1796 with US$354 billion in client assets, has embarked on a large-scale technology transformation to streamline operations and enhance client services.
In response to the growing need for digital innovation, Lombard Odier has collaborated with MongoDB to modernise its infrastructure using gen AI.
This initiative is part of the bank’s ongoing commitment to reduce technical complexity and accelerate innovation.
The financial industry’s rapid digitalisation and the increasing demand for AI-powered solutions prompted Lombard Odier to evolve its systems.
In 2020, the bank launched the GX Program, a seven-year initiative aimed at modernising its banking architecture. This programme seeks to improve service delivery, reduce costs, and enhance customer experience by adopting the latest technological innovations.
Lombard Odier needed a cloud-agnostic database platform with AI capabilities to support this transformation.
The aim was to apply this transformation consistently across the organisation, reducing service disruption and accelerating innovation.
After a decade-long relationship, Lombard Odier chose MongoDB as its partner for this transformation.
MongoDB recommended its Modernisation Factory, combining generative AI tools and its expertise to speed up the process of application migration and modernisation.
The bank’s IT team set out to achieve three main objectives: replacing its existing SQL database with MongoDB, migrating from its legacy Java application server to a next-generation framework, and automating the testing of AI-driven use cases.
The bank’s portfolio management system (PMS), managing a wide range of financial instruments, was the first major application to migrate to MongoDB.
Additionally, Lombard Odier began moving over 250 applications to the new framework, using generative AI to accelerate code migration and enhance testing processes.
The migration process has been significantly accelerated. Lombard Odier has seen a dramatic reduction in the time taken for code migration – migrating simple code is now 50 to 60 times faster, and smaller applications migrate 20 times quicker.
Regression testing, which previously took three days, now completes in just three hours, thanks to AI-driven automated testing.
MongoDB’s cloud-agnostic solution, Atlas, also provides the flexibility needed for future cloud transitions while ensuring regulatory compliance and security.
The modernisation has created a developer-friendly culture at the bank, attracting new talent and freeing up resources for further innovation.
With the successful migration of key applications, Lombard Odier continues its progress under the GX Program and plans additional database migrations in the coming months.
Featured image credit: edited from freepik
