Elly Yates-Roberts |
Nationwide, the world’s largest building society, has moved its member website to Microsoft Azure.
“Over time, our website has grown in size and complexity,” said Peter Nutton, senior manager of Nationwide’s website. “So, we took the decision to build a new site from the ground up and simplify. We interviewed members on what they wanted from a new website and observed how they used it.”
The move was planned and carried out by Nationwide’s cloud team in collaboration with digital transformation consultancy Contino. In-house engineers, architects and delivery teams ran a series of test scenarios to ensure that the website worked effectively and reliably on its new cloud platform.
“The financial services sector is under constant pressure to provide a differentiated digital customer experience while being subject to regulatory scrutiny to improve operational resilience,” said Deepak Vensi, director of strategy and transformation at Contino. “Partnering with Microsoft, we’ve been able to instil a modern approach at Nationwide based on chaos engineering, allowing their engineering teams to proactively fix any incidents ahead of time and provide Nationwide’s members with a reliable and industry-leading digital experience.”
The website has also been given an updated appearance to ensure the content is clearer and easier to read for people with accessibility needs.
“We’ve been modernising our branches, so our website was the next logical step,” said Lottie Coleman, user interface design manager at Nationwide. “The design was focused on improving our members’ experience by simplifying what you see on the screen. But as well as refreshing Nationwide’s look, it was equally important to make sure the website was accessible for everyone. And by implementing new technology, we’re able to stay modern and react quickly to the ever-changing needs of our members and the industry.”
Nationwide is now planning to move additional workloads to the Azure cloud following the successful relaunch.
“Trust is critical in the financial sector,” said Michael Wignall, Azure business lead at Microsoft. “Customers need to feel confident that they can access services from their bank or building society at any time. By moving to Azure, Nationwide’s website will be more resilient and stable, allowing more members to connect with the building society when it suits them.”