Microsoft has entered into a seven-year partnership with Euroclear to provide the capital markets infrastructure with AI and cloud tools to improve operational efficiency and customer service.

Euroclear provides domestic and cross-border securities settlement and custody for bonds, equities, derivatives and investment funds.

Euroclear’s open data and digital platform will used Microsoft's AI, genAI, cloud technology and automated solutions to help streamline the development and operations of the platform, boost customer experience and drive new growth opportunities.

The move aims to help the company strengthen its capital markets ’ ecosystem and technology infrastructure by improving capabilities such as rapid disaster recovery and business continuity.

The partnership will initially focus on developing a financial data sharing ecosystem, transforming Euroclear's global offering, modernising customer engagement and strengthening its market infrastructure.

Ralph Haupter, president EMEA at Microsoft, said the partnership with Euroclear seeks to combine the fund investor's broad financial ecosystem of more than 2,000 institutions with the scalability of Microsoft systems.

"Together, we are enabling a shift from traditional sequential workflows to an ecosystem-centric capital markets model,” said Haupter. “This transformation will empower financial institutions to reimagine how they interact, analyse data, and deliver insights to end users, driving efficiency and innovation across the industry." 

The Euroclear group comprises Euroclear Bank, the International CSD, as well as Euroclear Belgium, Euroclear Finland, Euroclear France, Euroclear Nederland, Euroclear Sweden, Euroclear UK & International.

During the past few years, Microsoft has inked a number of AI and cloud deals, including one with LSEG to boost its data infrastructure using Microsoft Cloud and AI capabilities in 2022.

Earlier this month, the tech giant signed a partnership with OpenAI to support its development of AI, with the collaboration including revenue-sharing agreements and exclusive access to OpenAI’s APIs on Azure.

Earlier this month, Nationwide unveiled plans to expand the use of genAI from Microsoft.

The building society, which is the largest in the world, is already using the technology to handle customer queries. It rolled out genAI to help generate letters, with average response times having dropped from 45 to 10-15 minutes – an efficiency improvement of around 66 per cent.

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