How Oracle and Nvidia's Partnership Gives Oracle Financial Services Clients an AI Advantage.

The race for AI adoption in banking and financial services took a leap forward when Oracle and Nvidia announced their strategic partnership last year. This collaboration integrates the robust Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) with Nvidia's cutting-edge AI hardware and software, specifically designed to tackle the complex challenges the banking and financial services industry faces. Let's delve into the details and explore how this strategic alliance can benefit our clients.

 Blog Update: Oracle Announces the World's Largest AI Supercomputer in the Cloud at Oracle CloudWorld 2024.

Oracle just announced at Oracle CloudWorld 2024 the first Zettascale cloud computing clusters accelerated by the NVIDIA Blackwell platform. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is now taking orders for the largest AI supercomputer in the cloud—available with up to 131,072 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs.

Oracle already offers one of the most comprehensive AI infrastructure solutions. With these updates, clients can now run even the most demanding AI workloads in the cloud. While this may not be immediately relevant to our banking clients, as many of them are only beginning to explore AI, this announcement highlights Oracle's commitment and investment in research and development to become the top choice for banks selecting an AI platform.

Original Blog

Unlocking the Power of AI for Banking & Financial Services

Financial institutions are under continued pressure to innovate and stay ahead of the competition: rising customer expectations, ever-evolving regulations, and the growing threat of fraud demand sophisticated solutions. Artificial Intelligence (AI), with its ability to analyse vast datasets and uncover hidden patterns, presents a compelling opportunity for those who act quickly.

We have created an approach for banks to select Generative AI use cases using a Metrics-Driven approach. In several blogs, we have detailed how Oracle's AI solution can accelerate Finance Transformation; you can read a selection of them here.

The Oracle-Nvidia partnership has several aspects to it that we think are interesting for our clients:

• Unmatched Processing Power: OCI is upgrading its infrastructure by adding tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, including the powerful A100 and upcoming H100 models. These powerful GPUs provide the muscle for processing massive banking datasets and complex risk models, which is crucial for tasks like stress testing, fraud detection and algorithmic trading.
• A Complete AI Toolkit: The entire Nvidia AI platform is available on OCI. This platform encompasses a complete suite of data processing, training, and deployment tools, making it easy for banks and financial institutions to build and manage their AI projects effortlessly. With all the necessary tools in one secure environment, clients no longer have to integrate solutions from different vendors.
• Faster Time to Market: OCI provides pre-configured solutions and streamlined workflows that enable banks and financial institutions to start using AI quickly and efficiently. This removes a significant barrier to entry, allowing teams to focus on developing innovative AI solutions that deliver real business value.

Nvidia's Chip Advantage for Financial Services AI

Many of our clients have adopted an AWS or GCP strategy, and whilst these platforms offer good services, they lack the performance and completeness of the Nvidia offering.  Nvidia's GPUs are particularly well-suited for banking and financial services applications due to their unique architecture:

• Parallel Processing Power: Unlike traditional CPUs, GPUs excel at handling multiple tasks simultaneously. This is crucial for financial institutions that need to analyse massive datasets in real-time, such as for fraud detection or complex forecasting and scenario planning.
• High-Bandwidth Memory: GPUs have access to large amounts of high-bandwidth memory, allowing for quick access and processing of the vast datasets that fuel AI applications in finance.
• Specialised AI Features: Nvidia's GPUs are built with features specifically designed for AI workloads, further accelerating performance for tasks like risk modelling and pattern recognition in financial data.

AWS and GCP do not offer the same combination of cutting-edge chip design optimised for running Nvidia AI platforms. However, when combined with Nvidia's powerful chip technology, Oracle's secure cloud infrastructure provides banks and other financial institutions with a significant advantage in their efforts to adopt and implement AI solutions.

How Banks Are Already Leveraging Nvidia

Financial services institutions are already reaping the benefits of Nvidia's AI technology:

1. Deutsche Bank partnered with Nvidia to develop AI models for risk management, high-performance computing, and virtual assistants for the metaverse. This demonstrates the versatility of AI in finance, extending beyond just fraud detection.
2. American Express uses Nvidia AI to improve fraud detection accuracy and protect customers from fraudulent transactions. This is a critical application for all financial institutions, and Nvidia GPUs provide the power to handle real-time transaction analysis.
3. Upstart, a lending platform, utilises Nvidia AI to assess creditworthiness based on alternative data points, making credit more accessible to a wider range of borrowers. AI can empower financial institutions to make more informed lending decisions while expanding their reach.

Why Oracle + Nvidia Stands Out

While other cloud providers offer AI solutions, Oracle's partnership with Nvidia presents several unique advantages for financial institutions:

• Industry-Specific Solutions: Oracle has a proven track record serving banking and financial institutions with industry-specific offerings, such as Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications (OFSAA). This partnership allows them to tailor AI solutions to the specific needs of the financial services sector. For example, pre-built solutions for fraud detection or regulatory compliance can save banks valuable time and resources compared to generic AI offerings from other cloud providers.
• Focus on Security: Financial institutions handle sensitive customer data. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure boasts a strong track record in security compliance and data privacy. This, coupled with Nvidia's focus on secure AI development tools, offers a secure platform for financial institutions compared to cloud providers that might not prioritise security to the same degree.
• Openness and Flexibility: Oracle's BYOL (Bring Your Own License) program allows clients to leverage their existing Nvidia AI licenses within OCI. This flexibility gives financial institutions more control over costs and avoids vendor lock-in, a concern for some enterprises. Additionally, Oracle's support for various deep learning frameworks ensures developers can use their preferred tools within the OCI environment, offering more flexibility compared to potentially restrictive environments from competitors.

The Oracle and Nvidia partnership opens exciting possibilities for banking clients to integrate the Nvidia AI platform on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) with existing Oracle applications like OFSAA to accelerate real change in finance systems and processes.

OFSAA and AI-powered APPLICATIONS:

• Enhanced Credit Scoring: Leverage Nvidia GPUs to analyse vast customer information and financial history data within OFSAA. Train AI models to go beyond traditional credit scores and consider alternative data points like social media activity or cash flow patterns. This allows for more accurate risk assessments and the potential to expand credit access to underserved markets.
• Automated Regulatory Compliance: Utilise GenAI to automate data collection and analysis for key regulatory disclosure processes, such as CSRD, ESG, Climate, and even Basel submissions.
• Predictive Forecasting: Integrate Nvidia AI with financial data and forecasting modules. Train AI models to analyse historical trends, market conditions, and economic indicators. This will generate more accurate and insightful financial forecasts, delivering more informed decisions about resource allocation and strategic planning.
• Scenario Modeling with AI: Utilize Nvidia's power to run lower-level, client- or instrument-level, complex simulations to explore various "what-if" scenarios, considering potential market shifts, interest rate fluctuations, or economic events. This empowers leadership to be better prepared for future uncertainties and make data-driven adjustments to their strategies.
• AI-powered Budgeting and Resource Optimisation: Leverage AI to analyse cost spending patterns and identify areas for cost optimisation. Based on much larger data sets or near real-time data and AI insights, there is the potential to automate budget setting and resource management. This will allow our banking clients to streamline operations and remove significant costs.
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We think the potential for seamless data integration between OFSAA and the Nvidia AI platform on OCI is crucial. Oracle's pre-built connectors and data management tools can simplify this process and remove the cost and complexity that will come with an AWS or GCP approach.

We also believe that the scalability to accommodate growing data volumes and evolving AI workloads is another advantage for our clients. OCI's ability to add more Nvidia GPUs and adjust resources ensures the platform can grow alongside the bank's needs.

By integrating the Nvidia AI platform with existing Oracle applications, our clients can unlock a new level of intelligence within their finance operations. There are clear opportunities to make faster, more data-driven decisions, mitigate risk, optimise resources, and ultimately improve bottom-line performance.

How can we help?

Revvence can help in several valuable ways:

• Review your existing Oracle applications to propose how Nvidia AI or GenAI applications can add value.
• Create a proof-of-concept to show you the art of the possible and build your business case.
• Work with the Oracle AI Experts to craft AI use cases that have a high impact on your scenario.
• The design and delivery of end-to-end Oracle OFSAA solutions.