Intesa Sanpaolo Makes a £40 Million Investment in Thought Machine

Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy's largest bank by total assets and one of Europe's most profitable and sustainable financial institutions, has selected Thought Machine, the UK-headquartered core banking technology company, to power its new digital banking platform. In conjunction with this partnership, Intesa Sanpaolo has made a £40 million investment in Thought Machine to become part of the company's growth story.

Fazzaco Live Webinar Preview: Andrei Savitski Talks About Essentials for Starting A Brokerage

Intesa Sanpaolo has selected Thought Machine's core banking engine, Vault, to power Isybank, its new digital banking platform announced recently as part of the group's 2022-2025 Business Plan. Isybank will initially target 4 million of Intesa Sanpaolo's mass-market customers in Italy with a wide range of digital banking services, while driving a structural cost reduction for the group.

Intesa Sanpaolo has also indicated an intention to extend Thought Machine's core banking platform into the group's wider infrastructure as it continues to invest heavily in the bank's digital transformation, replacing mainframe-based core technology and moving to cloud infrastructure.

Vault was chosen for its flexibility to serve multi-currency and multi-country clients – with an intention announced by the bank to extend Thought Machine's role to other client segments beyond mass-market retail banking, both in Italy and internationally.

Carlo Messina, CEO of Intesa Sanpaolo, said: "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. We chose Thought Machine as our partner due to its international standing as a fintech innovator. We believe so strongly that Thought Machine is the right partner for this transformation that we are also announcing our investment in the company to be part of its growth story."

Paul Taylor, founder and CEO of Thought Machine, said: "Complementing the work we have done with Tier 1 banks around the world, we are now proud to announce that Italy's largest bank, and one of Europe's leading financial institutions, will adopt Thought Machine's technology into its new digital bank."

Source: BusinessWire