Novobanco, one of Portugal’s leading financial institutions, is on a journey to revolutionize its business model and reshape customer experience through digital transformation. At the heart of this shift is the bank's dedication to harnessing data and artificial intelligence (AI) to gain a holistic understanding of its customers, fuel personalized interactions, and streamline operations. 

Novobanco began its journey of transformation by tackling financial crime compliance. Using Quantexa’s Decision Intelligence Platform, the bank established a financial crime prevention data layer, which provided a centralized hub for seamless data access and enhanced risk management efforts. This foundational step not only strengthened compliance but also highlighted the potential of a unified, enterprise-wide data estate. 

Recognizing the opportunity to innovate further, Novobanco partnered with Quantexa and Microsoft to implement Quantexa Unify for Microsoft Fabric. This integration brought Quantexa’s best-in-class entity resolution capabilities into Microsoft’s fabric ecosystem, enabling the bank to eliminate data silos and create a trusted foundation for advanced analytics and AI workloads. By centralizing all its data in one place, Novo Banco empowered its teams to derive actionable customer insights, optimize operations, and drive innovation across departments. 

Today, Novobanco operates over 50 AI models, leveraging its unified data estate to deliver hyper-personalized customer experiences and achieve operational excellence. From enhancing fraud detection to refining customer insights, this collaborative approach underscores the transformative power of AI and data-driven decision-making. By focusing on scalability, innovation, and adaptability, Novo Banco is not only meeting today’s challenges but also positioning itself for a future shaped by data and AI. 

Breaking down data silos with Quantexa and Microsoft  

Novobanco is pursuing an ambitious vision to establish a scalable, enterprise-wide data estate that drives advanced analytics, enhances operational efficiency, and enables hyper-personalization. In partnership with Quantexa and Microsoft, the bank is building a robust data foundation to support its transformation. According to Seamus Murphy, the bank’s Chief Operating Officer, “Quantexa Unify for Microsoft Fabric will be the foundation for Novobanco to dismantle our organizational and data silos and enable advanced analytics, efficient use of AI, and better customer service.” 

Leveraging Quantexa’s powerful entity resolution capabilities, Novobanco gains a comprehensive 360° view of every customer and entity it interacts with. This unified, contextual data foundation empowers the bank to break down silos and unlock deeper insights. 

"Entity resolution allows us to connect all the dots in our customer data," Mira Vaz explains. "Whether it's understanding the relationships within a business network or tracking financial activity for regulatory compliance, we need a complete view of each entity to make informed decisions." This capability underpins the bank’s ability to deliver personalized services while also enhancing its ability to detect and mitigate financial risks. 

Dan Higgins, Chief Product Officer at Quantexa, explains, “Microsoft Fabric provides this amazing gathering place for data. When you then bring Quantexa's best in class scalability and accuracy of joining that data and creating insight and context, you can drive customer growth, identify behaviors that might be indicative of financial crimes, and then drive greater efficiency into the back office.” 

Additionally, Novobanco can create dynamic, connected views of its data directly from OneLake, automating cleansing, parsing and normalization of data sources, then performing sophisticated data matching to produce a connected view of the data. Microsoft Power BI reports are then delivered to highlight data quality metrics and issues. These insights become a powerful resource when paired with tools like Copilot Studio and Azure OpenAI, enabling the bank to augment and automate decision-making processes, foster innovation, and deliver smarter, data-driven outcomes. 

"Quantexa’s Platform helps us dismantle organizational and data silos to enable AI-driven customer insights. This capability is foundational for the bank’s transformation.”

Seamus Murphy, Chief operating Officer, Novobanco 

"Quantexa’s Platform helps us dismantle organizational and data silos to enable AI-driven customer insights,” says Murphy. “This capability is foundational for the bank’s transformation.” With a single source of truth for all customer data, Novobanco can not only increase efficiency but also ensure regulatory compliance and precision in risk management. 

Key benefits of the platform: 

Empowering personalized banking through unified data-driven AI 

The customer experience is a key concern throughout this transformation. "Our goal is to put the customer at the center of every decision we make, which starts with understanding their needs and expectations," Murphy explains. However, achieving this level of customer focus requires more than just advanced analytics; it demands a robust foundation of clean, connected data to make AI and advanced analytics actionable.  

Bill Borden, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft, explains, “Novabanco's obsession with customer first is amazing and the idea of using Microsoft Fabric plus the entity resolution capabilities of Quantexa allows Novobanco to have a single platform to build new products and capabilities, create efficiencies and do that once.” 

Novobanco is transforming traditional banking by merging a customer-first approach with the potential of AI. Through its collaboration with Quantexa and Microsoft, the bank is now capable of using data to understand each customer's needs in real time and respond with tailored solutions. As Murphy points out, “This is about moving from traditional banking to hyper-personalized, data-driven experiences. With Quantexa’s technology, we’re able to understand individual customer preferences, which allows us to serve them better and protect them more effectively." 

“AI came to the table as a game changer. We have around 50 AI models deployed in the bank.”

Pedro Mira Vaz, Chief Data and Analytics Office, Novobanco. 

Pedro Mira Vaz, Novobanco’s Chief Data and Analytics Officer, emphasizes that these capabilities allow the bank to deliver highly customized financial products, tailored to individual preferences. This hyper-personalization goes beyond conventional approaches, leveraging Quantexa's powerful AI and analytics to engage customers meaningfully. By capturing, analyzing, and responding to real-time data, Novobanco can present relevant offers and solutions to customers through the right channels and at the right moments. 

Leveraging AI for operational excellence 

The bank’s digital transformation is not only revolutionizing the customer experience but also redefining its internal operations. By deploying multiple AI models, Novobanco is using advanced analytics to predict customer behavior, prevent fraud, and improve operational efficiency across departments. These AI capabilities are powered by Quantexa’s Decision Intelligence and the flexible data infrastructure of Microsoft Fabric, allowing the bank to respond swiftly to changing customer needs and the complexities of financial crime prevention. 

Murphy elaborates on the impact of AI, saying, "AI is not just a tool; it’s a strategy that allows us to reimagine banking. It helps us provide meaningful, real-time insights that strengthen customer relationships and drive better outcomes." With AI-powered dashboards, Novobanco employees can now access dynamic customer profiles, giving them the ability to engage with clients more personally and meaningfully. 

This approach enables the team to quickly identify solutions and adapt to new challenges. As Mira Vaz notes, "We aren’t just integrating technology; we're reshaping how teams across the bank interact with data.” 

“We took this big challenge of creating a financial crime prevention data layer to be the basis of our data warehouse at the bank. It's the first project done in Fabric to be able to make sure that we have a single source of truth for everything customer related,” continues Mira Vaz. This provides a centralized hub for data scientists and analysts to access and work with data seamlessly. Future developments will enable business users to access information through user-friendly semantic models, ensuring that everyone at Novobanco can leverage data to make informed decisions. 

Future positioned banking with Quantexa and Microsoft 

By building a data foundation that supports AI-driven insights, Novobanco is not only transforming its current operations but also future-proofing its business model. As customer expectations evolve, so does the need for Novobanco to be agile and adaptable. This flexibility is possible because of the strong, interconnected data estate facilitated by Quantexa and the versatility of Microsoft Fabric. 

“A big part of Nova Banco and our culture is all about innovative thinking, and over the last year and a half, we've really taken data and AI to transform the customer experience. That's where the passion anchors from, and that's why partnerships with the likes of Quantexa and Microsoft are key to the future of the bank.”

Seamus Murphy, Chief operating Officer, Novobanco 

Murphy views Quantexa’s capabilities in data management and Entity Resolution as foundational. "Quantexa is on the leading edge of data management and network generation, essential elements for our business,” he says. “By combining these capabilities with the power of Microsoft Fabric, we can accelerate our data-driven initiatives and create value across every part of our business.”