SAS Viya Implementation Empowers Shawbrook Bank’s Data Analytics Transformation

(IN BRIEF) Shawbrook Bank, a UK-based financial institution, has partnered with SAS to enhance its analytical capabilities and customer service. By implementing SAS Viya on Microsoft Azure, Shawbrook aims to improve data handling, model customer performance, and reduce risk. The partnership will enable Shawbrook to test and validate models before deployment, simplify deployment processes, and monitor model performance effectively. The bank sees this collaboration as an opportunity to leverage machine learning and AI to expand its customer base and address new markets.

(PRESS RELEASE) MARLOW, UK, 29-Nov-2023 — /EuropaWire/ —  SAS Institute Inc., the leader in analytics, announces that Shawbrook Bank, a leading provider of financial products including loans, mortgages, SME finance, and savings, has chosen to implement SAS® Viya® on Microsoft Azure to advance its analytical capabilities, manage risk more effectively, and better serve its diverse customer base.

Based in the UK, Shawbrook serves individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, and real estate investors, offering a wide range of lending and savings products.

With over 425,000 customers, a loan portfolio worth £10.5 billion, and £10.9 billion in customer savings, Shawbrook recognized the need to modernize its operations to meet the evolving needs of its customers and the industry. SAS, a leader in AI and analytics with extensive experience in the banking sector, is guiding Shawbrook through this transformation as the bank transitions from an on-premises data center to the cloud.

Paul Allton, Chief Prudential Risk Officer at Shawbrook Bank, explained the benefits of using SAS Viya on Microsoft Azure, emphasizing the flexibility to handle data regardless of its source or delivery method.

“There are multiple benefits to using SAS Viya on Microsoft Azure. First and foremost, being able to tackle our data wherever and however it’s delivered to us – whether that’s on-premise or the cloud.

“New modelling techniques will also give us an edge in terms of understanding the performance of customers far better than we did before. With the SAS technology in place, we can choose to support more customers with their borrowing needs for the same risk, or we can actually choose to have less risk with what we do today – something that is becoming increasingly important.”

The implementation of SAS Viya enables Shawbrook to test and validate models before deployment, simplify the deployment process, and monitor model performance efficiently, regardless of the language used to create them.

Allton also expressed excitement about leveraging machine learning and AI to expand Shawbrook’s customer base and address new markets in the future.

“I don’t want to wait for a performance report to tell me a model is not working; I want to have the insights at my fingertips to make a change in real time. Having that option and improving that resilience in the business is crucial.”

“Longer term, I’m really excited about taking Shawbrook to a place where we are leveraging machine learning and AI to essentially say ‘yes’ to more customers and address new markets, which is going to be a really important, powerful proposition.”

Roderick Crawford, Senior Vice President of SAS Northern Europe, emphasized the transformation of the banking industry in response to a digital world and expressed SAS’s commitment to supporting Shawbrook’s modernization efforts. “The banking industry has dramatically transformed over the last decade as financial institutions and consumers continue to adapt to an increasingly digital world. With SAS Viya in place, Shawbrook can now maximise productivity, spending less time waiting for insights and more time acting on them and we are very much looking forward to supporting the bank as it continues to modernise.”

For more details on this partnership, please read the full customer case study.

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