re:Invent 2020 – Financial Services Industry Track Weekly Roundup

The Financial Services track for AWS re:Invent 2020 shares how AWS customers in the capital markets, banking, payments, and insurance sectors are turning this year’s challenges into upsides—and Building for the future.

Speaking of upsides: The conference went fully virtual this year, for the first time. And with more than 540,000 participants signing up for re:Invent 2020, this is AWS’ biggest re:Invent of all!

This final weekly roundup for 2020 showcases Financial Services track sessions you may have missed in the last three weeks. It also spotlights upcoming attractions for the Financial Services track you will find when re:Invent returns, from January 12–14, 2021.

Before diving into the Financial Services track highlights, we also want to remind readers who may have missed Andy Jassy’s Keynote, you can still view it on the AWS YouTube channel. Focusing on the theme of ‘8 keys to building a reinvention culture,’ he emphasized proactive and ongoing reinvention built on several pillars, including customer-centricity; leadership; and working with clients to identify the right technology applications for their particular enterprises. He also examined, in 2020, “Some of things that we see being reinvented as we speak.”

Several guest speakers joined Andy, including Lori Beer, CIO of JPMorgan Chase, who shares how important AWS is to what their company does. As she put it, “We’ve have long realized that, while our relationships and financial expertise are paramount, it is technology that continues to help us differentiate.” Her presentation begins at 2:23—and you can catch the full replay here.

Financial Services Track and AWS on Air Financial Services Featured Programs

Week One: November 30–December 4, 2020

FSI201: Financial Services: Navigating change while facing forward, with HSBC
During the pandemic, financial institutions have harnessed new technologies to meet the needs of consumers and businesses. Learn about HSBC’s collaboration with AWS to deliver new solutions and drive continued industry transformation. Featuring Dinesh Keswani, Group CTO, HSBC, joining Frank Fallon, VP of Financial Services, AWS. View on demand.

FSI202: JPMorgan Chase: Migrations at scale through cloud blueprints and automation
JPMorgan Chase is accelerating their cloud migration by leveraging reusable Cloud Blueprints—which are standardized, automated, secure, and repeatable cloud architectures that can be deployed for common uses cases. Hear how they defined their initial blueprints; threat modeling, and risk-mitigation controls—and standardized their offerings using AWS and infrastructure as code technologies to provide self-service capabilities to developers. Featuring JR Reid, Head of Cloud Engineering, and Rahul Arya, Managing Director, Global Head of Solutions Architecture, JPMorgan Chase with Bernie Herdan, Global Account Solutions Architect, AWS. View on demand.

AWS on Air: Voice of the Customer – Goldman Sachs
Last year at re:Invent, Goldman Sachs shared how they successfully migrated their Global Investment Research Portal to AWS, creating a secure and resilient hybrid architecture. This AWS on Air session focuses on how Goldman Sachs evolved this architecture, moving from a hybrid to a pure multi-region deployment in AWS, enabling Investment Research to exist as a Goldman Sachs data center. This session covers: event-based architecture, multi-region approach, and AWS Managed Services. Victoria Ledda, Managing Director, Investment Research Engineering, Goldman Sachs speaks with Nicholas Walsh, Senior Technical Evangelist, AWS. AWS On Air features livestreams with news, demos, interviews, and more from re:Invent, Tuesday through Thursday, weekly. View on demand.

Week Two: December 7–11, 2020

FSI203: AXA: Rearchitecting with serverless to accelerate innovation
More than 50,000 customers use AXA’s usage-based, pay-as-you-drive insurance solution, which requires real-time data processing and analytics to generate a driver score (each moving car sends an update every second). This session shares how AXA built its serverless solution, lessons the company learned, and benefits it is realizing from its architecture upgrade. Vincent Hiribarren, Lead Architect, AXA and Xavier Loup, Global Solutions Architect, AWS present. View on demand.

FSI302: Security at scale: How Goldman Sachs manages access control
Goldman Sachs is harnessing AWS to launch new businesses. We’ll walk you through the evolution of the financial firm’s micro-account architecture and network design to manage access control. Learn how AWS solutions make it easy for development teams to establish connections between accounts, while retaining connection-level visibility, isolation boundary, and enforcement of least privilege to ensure optimal security. The speakers are Robert Cossin, VP, and Sujoy Saha, Associate, Goldman Sachs; and Harsha Sharma, Global Account SA, AWS. View on demand.

Week Three: December 14–18, 2020

FSI206: How Venmo responded to the demand for contactless payment on Amazon Aurora
Venmo is an early adopter that leveraged managed services to help fast-track their business use cases. Learn how Venmo pilots new features quickly, including its response to customers’ shift to contactless. Venmo piloted a new feature to accept payments separate from the individual owner’s account. Discover how you can leverage AWS Managed Services to move to production earlier. Nick Ciubotariu, Chief Technology Officer, Venmo and Pubali Sen, Senior Solutions Architect, AWS are the featured speakers. View on demand.

FSI303: Fidelity Investments’ journey to operationalize cloud observability
Fidelity Investments has hundreds of AWS accounts spread across multiple AWS Regions, supporting a variety of business units and consumed by 12,000 global developers. This session covers a fully cloud-native, serverless solution created by Fidelity that delivers (near) real-time, actionable insights and enterprise-wide analytics on the operational health of its services. Fidelity will discuss why this solution was needed, operational insights, and how metrics measured help improve Fidelity’s cloud operations. View on demand.

AWS on Air: Voice of the Customer – The Vanguard Retail Analytics and AI/ML Journey
In this session, Denise Murphy, Head of Retail Distribution Channel Technology Solutions, will review her team’s four-year Analytics and Machine Learning journey to the cloud. She will detail key lessons learned, including building a solid architectural foundation; how to effectively team up with your business clients; and taking an iterative approach by focusing on solving specific use cases and continuously evolving the architecture from there. View on demand.

Financial Services Industry Live Session  
Join Scott Mullins, Director, Worldwide Business Development, Financial Services and Ilya Epshteyn, Principal Solutions Architect, from AWS, as they review key 2020 trends impacting Financial Services across capital markets, banking, payments, and insurance. They will also highlight AWS customer stories—in addition to sharing AWS services and solutions, particularly relevant to the Financial Services industry, that have launched this year. View on demand.

January 2021 re:Invent Sessions

Between sips of eggnog, bites of latke, or however you celebrate the holidays, mark your calendars and get ready for the return of re:Invent programming from January 12–14 2021!

For your convenience, all three Financial Services Industry sessions are on the same day: January 12^th.

Gear up for the following three great customer sessions:

FSI205-PT1: Barclays: Transforming customer experience with Amazon Connect (January 12, 9:30 am PST)
Last year, Barclays chose Amazon Connect to compete with popular startups providing innovative customer experiences in a rapidly evolving digital bank landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic then increased the urgency of Barclays’ Amazon Connect implementation, as the bank needed to enable 25,000 contact center agents to work from home, which it achieved in just six weeks. Learn how Barclays rapidly modernized its contact center and is transforming omnichannel customer engagement with Amazon Connect. Speaking are: Sean Charlton, CIO of Contact Centres, Barclays and Milos Cosic, Senior Worldwide Production Apps Specialist Solutions Architect, AWS. View here.

FSI205-PT2: Fannie Mae: Transforming loan evaluation with machine learning on AWS (January 12, 10:30 am PST)
Fannie Mae used AWS machine learning services to improve its important Multifamily line of business, which provides lenders with essential loans to buy affordable rental units for families. Its machine learning application can identify up to 48% of applicants that are likely to default. This session shares practical guidance on implementing machine learning at scale, including data gathering and transformation using a data lake and model transparency and explainability. Subra Seshadri, Vice President, Enterprise Architecture, Fannie Mae and Paul Jeyasingh, Advisory Consultant, AWS present. View here.

FSI205-PT3: Capital One’s Journey to being “all in” on the cloud (January 12, 11:00 am PST)
In 2015, Capital One decided to go “all in” on the cloud. That decision set in motion a company-defining objective to transform how it operates. Five years later, Capital One shares its technology transformation story, from its initial approach to this massive objective, to successfully exiting its remaining data centers in 2020. Learn how a highly regulated financial institution harnessed AWS to change the way it architects and deploys applications, accelerating new product and feature delivery from months to weeks. The speakers are Danny Seeley, Senior Director, Cloud Engineering, Capital One and Michael Haken, Principal Solutions Architect, AWS. View here.

Your re:Invent 2020 Financial Services Industry Guide

Beyond the customer sessions featured on the re:Invent Financial Services track there are a total of 56 Financial Services-focused sessions available across all tracks and programs. Visit the AWS re:Invent 2020 – Financial Services Industry Guide to maximize your conference experience. There, you can download the full Financial Services Attendee Guide to get further information on industry sessions, activities, and “how to re:Invent.”

Still haven’t registered for re:Invent in January? To do so, click here.