HP has signed up Leeds Building Society (LBS) as the first client for its cloud-based Shared Services Alliance in conjunction with Yorkshire Building Society.
The Shared Service Alliance, launched last month, uses HP’s private cloud to provide financial institutions with datacentre, service management, application development and client support.
Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) will provide core application software for mortgages and savings along with knowledge of regulatory compliance and financial services.
The deal is expected to last ten years and will allow the building society to develop new functionality more quickly in response to the changing needs of its customers, according to HP.
Leeds Building Society is the fifth largest in the UK with assets of £10 billion and 65 branches, 29 of them in Yorkshire alone.
Both building societies will use the HP private cloud running on its tier 4 datacentre in the UK with the hardware giant managing and updating the infrastructure as well as securing it.
“Like all financial institutions, our future is dependent on delivering the services that both current and future customers want and need,” said Karen Wint, Leeds Building Society‘s operations director.
“We want to deliver product innovation combined with the very high levels of customer service that we know our customers value, whilst maintaining our market-leading cost ratios. With a proven track record of delivering large-scale hosted services and innovative technology, HP can help us achieve our ambitious ten-year plan.”
Jeremy Suddards, vice president of HP Enterprise Services in the UK and Ireland, said the deal marks a “major milestone” in its plans to provide mid-ranking UK financial institutions with cloud-based services.
"LBS is the foundation client of the recently announced Shared Services Alliance with YBS," he said. "We aim to help them compete on a level playing field with larger financial institutions by providing low-cost IT together with innovative products and enhanced customer interaction."
