The Bank of East Asia Improves Its Mobile App Experience with AWS

As an initiative under its omnichannel strategy, The Bank of East Asia, Limited (BEA) wanted to enhance the customer experience on its mobile banking app. Recognizing the limitations of on-premises infrastructures, BEA collaborated with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Professional Services to migrate its mobile app on AWS, aiming for better performance and scalability.

By working with AWS, BEA significantly improved its mobile app’s performance, enhancing the customer experience. This transformation also helped BEA establish a robust technical architecture while reducing development time, lowering platform costs, and improving app response times.

BEA is a financial services group based in Hong Kong and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It operates one of the largest branch networks in the city with 48 branches, 42 SupremeGold Centres, and 3 i-Financial Centres.

Building on its extensive branch network, BEA extends its reach through a comprehensive range of internet banking services, anchored by its mobile app, BEA Mobile. Customers use the app to conveniently manage their finances with features such as bill pay, credit card management, and loan applications. As demand for mobile banking rises across its markets, BEA has positioned its mobile app as a core component of its omnichannel strategy, aiming to deliver a seamless banking experience.

To support its strategy, BEA needed to transform the infrastructure behind its mobile app, which was previously hosted on premises in its data center. Growing demand meant that scaling the hardware became increasingly time-consuming and complex—and the infrastructure lacked the flexibility to quickly release new services. Additionally, with financial compliance regulations constantly evolving, BEA’s IT team recognized the need for additional investment to ensure data security and privacy. Stephen Leung, group chief information officer, general manager, and head of technology and productivity division of BEA, explains, “We wanted to migrate BEA Mobile to the cloud to overcome our infrastructure challenges. We were looking for a solution that could boost our agility and provide customers with an enhanced mobile banking experience.”

BEA chose to migrate its mobile app to AWS, gaining the scalability to drive development cost-effectively through AWS's pay-as-you-go model. To ensure the migration followed best practices, BEA worked with AWS Professional Services. AWS experts collaborated with BEA to design an enterprise-grade, scalable, and cost-effective architecture leveraging AWS cloud-native services. The solution included an AWS microservices-based infrastructure built on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). Based on AWS recommendations, BEA also implemented Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for MySQL to simplify the management of the app’s database services and Amazon OpenSearch Service for real-time search, monitoring, and analysis of app data.

Through the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF), AWS Professional Services worked with BEA’s partners, including IBM, on app development, infrastructure, operations, and security. Part of this process involved developing reusable blueprints that defined cloud standards and future-state operating models. To build its expertise further, BEA established a structured training program that incorporates professional certifications and practical workshops. This initiative aims to equip employees with essential cloud management skills, ultimately enhancing operational efficiency.

By working with AWS Professional Services, BEA reduced the development time for its app, completing the project in 18 months. Additionally, by adopting a pay-as-you-go model on AWS, the bank achieved infrastructure savings compared to its legacy on-premises solution. In terms of performance, app response times improved, enhancing the user experience, while the IT team reduced management time, allowing them to focus on future app developments. Comments Leung, “We’ve created a reliable and robust technical infrastructure on AWS to handle fluctuating user traffic and data streams dynamically in a cost-effective manner.”

By developing on AWS, BEA has brought a new level of customer service to its BEA Mobile app. The bank now delivers app updates in a timely manner, ensuring customers have quick access to the latest features and enhancements. Additionally, integrating the app’s data with the bank’s data lake and implementing data tagging provides BEA with deeper insights into customers’ digital footprints. “With the interoperability of our AWS infrastructure, we analyze data in-depth to deliver highly personalized, customer-oriented content and services based on comprehensive user profiles,” explains Leung.

With the support of the security framework and third-party solutions from AWS, BEA continues to comply with Hong Kong banking regulations and global financial industry standards. “Combining AWS’s security with our security control measures ensured that we maintain compliance in an evolving regulatory landscape,” says Leung. Customers have responded positively to the revamped app. This feedback confirms that BEA’s goal of providing seamless omnichannel banking is being met. Leung states, “We’ll explore with AWS the opportunities to develop cloud solutions that maintain compliance and deliver better customer experiences.”