NORDLB.COM

NORD/LB Supports Multi-Year,
Bank-Wide IT Transformation
with Confluent

With total assets of EUR 126 billion, NORD/LB Norddeutsche Landesbank
is one of Germany’s leading commercial banks. The bank is in the midstof an enterprise-wide transformation program, NORD/LB 2024, in which
Challenge
Help drive a bank-wide transformationthat includes a 500 million euro
investment in new IT systems anddigitalization initiatives
Solution
Use Confluent’s platform for data inmotion to develop a new core bankingplatform, enabling improved realtime analytics, fraud detection, andcustomer retention
Results• Competitive differentiator
established• Event streaming

adoption streamlined• Streaming infrastructure
costs reduced

it will invest about 500 million euros in new IT systems and digitalization
initiatives.
As part of the NORD/LB 2024 program, the bank is developing a newcore banking platform based on event streaming with Confluent, basedon Apache Kafka®. In addition to enabling more advanced, real-time
analytics across the bank, this platform will support improvements in fraud
detection, customer retention, and trade/investment analysis, as well asnew products that will differentiate NORD/LB from its competitors in
the market.
A recent project that required data to be collected and aggregatedfrom a wide variety of the bank’s systems underscored the difficulties
that many teams within the bank face with accessing data. Significant
effort was required to load, map, and assemble the data via point-topoint integrations. “We had no central way to do data analytics yet, anddepartments found it enormously difficult to access their own data,” says
Sven Wilbert, Data Manager at NORD/LB. “The process to do so washugely involved, lengthy, and difficult.”
When the new banking platform is deployed to production, NORD/LB will
have in place an event-driven architecture based on Confluent that not only
solves the near-term challenges of accessing siloed data but also positions
the bank for long-term growth and changes in the industry. “Confluent isenabling us to address our need for a scalable, highly available messaging
infrastructure that allows us to decouple our producers from consumers,
setting the stage for us to be more flexible, agile, and responsive tochange,” says Wilbert. “And all this is without having complex dependency
chains of releases, upstream systems, and data consumers that have cost
us a lot of money and time in the past.”©2021 Confluent, Inc. | confluent.io1

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even more aligned with the needs of our customers. Our

Confluent is enabling us toaddress our need for a scalable,highly available messaging
infrastructure that allows us todecouple our producers fromconsumers, setting the stage for
us to be more flexible, agile, andresponsive to change.

roadmap has not changed as a result of COVID-19; we– Sven Wilbert, NORD/LB

As it has for many organizations, the pandemic served
as an accelerant for the NORD/LB digitalization
initiative, while at the same time introducing changes
in the industry that require agility to navigate. “TheCOVID-19 crisis has given NORD/LB the impetus to beable and willing to step on the gas,” says Wilbert. The
bank has kept the NORD/LB 2024 program on track
despite challenges and changes stemming from thepandemic. “At the end of our transformation, NORD/LB
will be smaller with less risk, but also more efficient andpowerful,” said Wilbert. “We will have powerful IT and be

are right on track.”

Business Results

Technical Solution

Competitive differentiator established. “Confluent’s

NORD/LB started its event streaming journey with atechnology continues to provide the opportunity to

proof-of-concept project in which data streaming fromdevelop competitively differentiated products for themultiple sources, including Twitter, Bloomberg, and thefuture and is the technology we’ll take our next steps

German stock exchange, are used to power real-time

with,” says Wilbert. “With the ability to do extensiveanalytics. Integrating real-time financial data withanalysis of data—whether that’s data-at-rest or data incontext-sensitive unstructured data will enable the bankmotion—we can accomplish a lot—and we can do it now

to make loan decisions and extend offers based on up-to-and quickly.”date market information.

Event streaming adoption streamlined. Throughout theTo ramp up, the NORD/LB team attended a Pathfinder

initial Confluent deployment, NORD/LB has received

Workshop offered by the Confluent Professional Services

expert guidance from Confluent engineers to ensure theteam. The two teams worked through whatarchitecture and deployment was sound and the rollout

NORD/LB wanted to achieve with event streaming

went smoothly. “For us, it’s important to do things righttechnology, common pitfalls to avoid, and how

once and right away, and to tackle things where it makes

to move from proof-of-concept to greater event

sense,” says Wilbert. “And Confluent is helping us do that.”
Streaming infrastructure costs reduced. Going forward,
NORD/LB is looking to use Multi-Region Clusters toreplicate data between datacenters as a way to minimize

streaming maturity, with a focus on cost-efficiency
and high availability. Confluent is continuing to provide
implementation support and training courses as more
NORD/LB teams begin event streaming projects.

cluster downtime and reduce infrastructure costs for

Following the proof-of-concept, the bank’s next focus isduplicate servers. “Keeping infrastructure duplicatedthe core banking system. Confluent will act as a central

and only using half means that 50% of my servers—andnervous system, providing real-time connections betweentherefore 50% of the money invested—are doing nothing,”

systems, enabling better responsiveness and greatersays Wilbert. “Money that doesn’t work doesn’t makeagility compared to the bank’s current system. “Themoney.”current banking system is too expensive, too complex, and©2021 Confluent, Inc. | confluent.io2

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too individualized to adapt quickly to current situationsof evolving schemas and Multi-Region Clusters for running

while still delivering results consistently and quickly in ana single cluster across multiple datacenters. “Multi-efficient manner,” says Wilbert.

Region Clusters are very interesting, but we don’t have

Initially, the bank considered implementing the newsystem without making substantive changes to theunderlying infrastructure. It quickly became clear that thisexperience with them yet,” says Wilbert. “This is an area
where Confluent can add a lot of value for us with theirexperience.”

strategy would only delay the larger transformation that

Looking further ahead, Wilbert’s group is now better

was needed. “If we put off updates to the infrastructure

prepared to move aspects of its data infrastructure tofor another three years, then when the new banking

the cloud when the bank is ready to do so. A roadmap

system was ready, we would have another huge quagmire

for transitioning to the cloud would include shiftingof point-to-point connections and file transfers and weConfluent Platform clusters self-managed on premises

wouldn’t have gained anything,” says Wilbert. “As a bank,to Confluent Cloud. This will enable NORD/LB to take

NORD/LB understands that now is the time to act.”

advantage of the fully managed cloud service to eliminate

As NORD/LB continues to develop its event streaming
adoption maturity, Wilbert and his team will help drive
adoption by exploring additional capabilities of Confluent

the administrative burden of self-managed clusters andenable teams to focus on delivering additional value-add
products and services to NORD/LB customers.

Platform including Schema Registry for the management

Confluent’s technology continues to provide the opportunity todevelop competitively differentiated products for the future and is thetechnology we’ll take our next steps with.
– Sven Wilbert, NORD/LB

Learn More About NORD/LBhttps://www.nordlb.com©2021 Confluent, Inc. | confluent.io3