Nationwide expands Amazon Web Services partnership to delve deeper into AI
Nationwide will have access to artificial intelligence-powered tools to help staff in their everyday interactions with its members
Nationwide Building Society is using a cloud platform from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that offers artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to support its digital innovation and improve member experiences.
The building society has extended an existing agreement with the cloud giant to include broader services, including staff training.
The service, Amazon Connect, is cloud-based, and aimed at contact centres, offering AI-powered tools to support both branch and contact centre operations.
Suresh Viswanathan, group chief operating officer at Nationwide Building Society, said: “As we continue our digital transformation, we need cloud technology that can support our ambition to deliver better customer experiences, while keeping safety and security at the forefront.
“With AWS, we can better support our frontline colleagues to help improve member experience and deliver better outcomes for over 17 million customers.”
A Nationwide statement said the building society has a wider relationship with AWS, beyond Amazon Connect, aimed at adopting the latest cloud technologies that support customer services. “As well as Amazon Connect, we use a wide range of services in AWS to achieve this outcome and deliver modern, secure and scalable capabilities quicker,” it said.
The company added that such cloud services play a key role in its digital transformation journey, and that it will use the expanded agreement to invest more in staff training in cloud and AI through the latest AWS training.
Working with Big Tech companies allows UK finance firms to catch up on their counterparts in the US, who lead the way in the use of AI.
According to recent research from Evident, UK banks must act like Big Tech companies, such as AWS, and less like startups if they want to avoid being slow movers and emulate the success US banks have had with AI.
The firm, which tracks financial services AI adoption, said US banks lead the way. In its latest banking AI adoption index, six of the top 10 banks are US-based.
Evident said these leading banks for AI maturity have pulled away from their peers in 2025, consolidating earlier gains and increasingly realising a return on investment for their spending on AI. It found that the top 10 banks are accelerating on AI adoption more than twice as fast as the rest of the field, as early AI investments translate into business value.
According to recent Lloyds Banking Group research, 59% of surveyed firms reported AI-driven productivity gains in the past 12 months, compared with 32% in the 2024 survey.
In its Financial institutions sentiment survey, Banks also reported rising returns from AI in other areas. The survey found that 21% of respondents believe AI is directly driving business growth, compared with 8% a year ago.
Meanwhile, a third (33%) of respondents said AI is enhancing customer experiences, up from 14%. The same number said they have deeper customer insights through AI, compared with 18% last year. As a result of the improvements, half of the finance companies surveyed said they planned to increase spending on AI over the next 12 months.
Digital pioneer
Nationwide is a pioneer of digital technology, a mantle that emanates from a decision made in 2008, in the fallout of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which brought the global finance sector to its knees. At that time, the building society set out its stall to be a digital leader.
Since the £1bn transformation that followed, the organisation has been hailed a digital leader in an industry known for its innovative use of IT.
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