West Monroe and Backbase Enter Partnership to Accelerate Digital Capabilities for Banks and Credit Unions

News provided by

Mar 14, 2024, 11:00 ET

Digital banking platform offers flexibility and scalability to retail and commercial financial institutions, empowering them to modernize their online banking customer experience

CHICAGO, March 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- West Monroe, a business and technology consulting firm, and Backbase, the global leader in Engagement Banking, today announced their strategic partnership to help accelerate the digital transformation of the U.S. banking industry.

The partnership harnesses the unique strengths of West Monroe's financial services advisory and digital experience capabilities and combines them with Backbase's Engagement Banking Platform. This platform acts as a robust foundation for banks and credit unions to simplify and elevate their digital banking experiences, ensuring flexibility and scalability in an ever-evolving landscape.

Whether attracting new deposits, lending relationships, or treasury management clients, financial institutions (FIs) are seeking new ways to acquire customers, boost revenue, and meet the evolving needs of customers. With Backbase, banks and credit unions can progressively modernize or build on top of their legacy IT systems and quickly customize and personalize their digital banking capabilities. The result is a better customer and member experience, operational efficiencies, and the ability to bring products to market quickly. Together, West Monroe and Backbase will help FIs deliver a seamless digital experience across all channels. Already, more than 120 financial institutions around the world leverage the Backbase platform.

Empowering financial institutions with seamless digital experiences

"Backbase is dedicated to spearheading digital transformation through progressive banking modernization," stated Jouk Pleiter, Founder and CEO of Backbase. "The partnership with West Monroe allows us to accelerate this mission, as it is designed to push the boundaries of what banks and credit unions can offer to their customers and members."

"At Backbase, we help banks and credit unions to continuously innovate, upgrade their member and customer experiences and go to market with new products and services quickly in order to remain competitive," said Vimal Sethi, Global Vice President for Partnership & Alliances at Backbase. "Part of our mission is to align with partners who share the same vision. With West Monroe, we can consult with our joint customers to provide the best solution for their needs and expedite implementation."

Banks and credit unions that want to differentiate and customize their digital banking offerings have historically faced a limited choice when looking for a digital platform provider, leaving them unprepared for their online banking implementation journey. West Monroe recognizes the unique challenges banks face as they seek to create a seamless experience across platforms. The Backbase Engagement Banking platform, enhanced by West Monroe's strategic guidance, aims to empower banks and credit unions with unparalleled flexibility to customize, innovate, and differentiate their offerings.

"This flexible digital banking platform with off-the-shelf functionality is going to make an immediate impact for our clients in both retail and commercial banking," said Neil Hartman, senior partner, financial services at West Monroe. "It brings out the best of West Monroe—not only in the functionality that Backbase has built, but the ability to leverage the platform to highlight our digital-first mindset, AI and development capabilities, and industry expertise. This gives our clients additional value to help them become digital organizations."

West Monroe's Financial Services practice has vast experience working with both the mid-market and the largest financial services institutions, partnering on hundreds of commercial digital transformation implementations to help them meet the demands of a rapidly changing industry. The West Monroe team delivers work across the commercial, treasury management, and retail lines of business on issues around payments, digital strategy and technology implementation, growth and productivity, M&A integration, as well as risk and regulatory compliance.

"We actively look for like-minded partners focused on the industries West Monroe helps to drive outcomes for, quickly and predictably," said Casey Foss, chief commercial officer at West Monroe. "Our clients are looking for proven solutions that leverage technology, data, and digital products to improve the experiences of their own end users — and ultimately, drive value to their bottom line. We're excited to enhance our offerings with this strategic partnership."

Discover more about the partnership between Backbase and West Monroe, and witness firsthand how they enhance the digital capabilities of US financial institutions, at the Engage Americas event in Miami (April 23, 2024). More information about this event, speakers and sessions can be found at https://www.backbase.com/events/engage-2024-americas.

About West Monroe

West Monroe is a digital services firm that was born in technology but built for business—partnering with companies in transformative industries to deliver quantifiable financial value. We believe that digital is a mindset—not a project, a team, or a destination—and it's something companies become, not something they do. That's why we work in diverse, multidisciplinary teams that blend management consulting, digital design, and product engineering to move companies from traditional ways of working to digital operating models—and create experiences that transcend the digital and physical worlds. Connected by the 13 founding values that drive our culture, our 2,000 employees work collaboratively across the firm with the belief that our clients' success is our success. Visit WestMonroe.com to learn more.

About Backbase

Backbase is on a mission to re-architect banking around the customer.

Backbase created the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform – a unified platform with the customer at the center, empowering banks to accelerate their digital transformation. From customer onboarding, to servicing, loyalty and loan origination, our single platform — open and frictionless, with ready-to-go apps — improves every aspect of the customer experience. Built from the ground up with the customer at the heart, our Engagement Banking Platform easily plugs into existing core banking systems and comes pre-integrated with the latest fintechs so financial institutions can innovate at scale.

Industry analysts Gartner, Celent, Omdia and IDC continuously recognize Backbase's category leadership. Over 120 financials around the world have embraced the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform — including AIB, Banorte, Barclays, BIAT, Bank of the Philippine Islands, BDO, BNP Paribas, Banque Saudi Fransi, BRD, Citibank, Discovery Bank, First National Bank, HDFC, Ila Bank, KeyBank, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, Navy Federal Credit Union, OTP Group, PostFinance, Raiffeisen, RBC, Standard Bank, Saudi National Bank, Société Générale, Truist, and TPBank.

Backbase is a private fintech company, founded in 2003 in Amsterdam (Global HQ), with regional offices in Atlanta (Americas HQ), Boise, Cardiff, Dubai, Hyderabad, Kraków, London, Mexico City, Milano, New York, Singapore (Asia HQ), Sydney, and Toronto.