Nationwide completes 15 million customer
Nationwide has migrated 15 million customer accounts from a 45-year-old system to a new Microsoft Azure-based core platform, a move that consolidates data
Nationwide has completed the migration of 15 million customer accounts to a new core platform built on Microsoft Azure. The project replaced a legacy customer data system that had been in operation for 45 years.
The substantial migration covers customer records, products, sort codes, card providers, branches, and service journeys. According to the source, the building society's next step is to move and integrate the accounts of approximately five million Virgin Money customers onto the new platform.
Data Consolidation for a Unified Platform
In preparation for the switch, Nationwide spent three years consolidating 19 separate data stores onto a single platform using Microsoft Azure and Azure Databricks. Sri Kanisapakkam, chief data and analytics officer at Nationwide, stated the society's goal was to create one unified platform.
"We wanted one unified platform that serves all of the data to the society in one place, on one technology, on the cloud," Kanisapakkam said. The resulting platform combines structured and unstructured data, which the bank states provides the necessary context for the safe deployment of artificial intelligence across the group.
Foundation for Trusted AI Deployment
Nationwide emphasizes that a trusted data foundation is a prerequisite for reliable AI. "AI is not magic," Kanisapakkam explained. "It needs to understand how your data is organised and how your data is structured."
The society reports this trusted data base is already being used to understand about 120 distinct customer journeys and to support Virgin Money customer matching. It also enables a new capability called 'Talk to Data,' which offers senior leaders new ways to interrogate data.
Internal AI Tool Adoption
Nationwide has expanded its collaboration with Microsoft by deploying AI tools internally. The finance function has been issued 1,000 premium Copilot licences, while 2,500 engineers have been given access to GitHub Copilot and Azure OpenAI for generative AI use cases. Azure AI Foundry is also being implemented for future agent development.
An internal poll revealed significant early adoption of these tools within the finance department. The poll results are shown below:
| User Group | Usage Frequency | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Finance respondents | Use Copilot every working day | 46% |
| Finance respondents | Use Copilot several times a week | 36% |
Katy Barker-Cook, director of future capability and operations in finance at Nationwide, cautioned against overclaiming the impact while adoption is still developing. She noted staff are already reporting benefits.
Staff are seeing faster drafting of documents, quicker turnaround on routine outputs, and more consistent written materials. "It doesn’t replace judgement, especially in finance where accuracy really matters," Barker-Cook said. "But it shortens the path to a good first draft."
