MongoDB, Inc announced a strategic partnership with Lombard Odier, a prestigious Swiss private bank founded in 1796, to further modernize its core banking technology systems. Through this collaboration, Lombard Odier has significantly advanced the modernization of its infrastructure and applications with the help of generative AI, streamlining technical complexity and accelerating the bank’s innovation capabilities. The generative AI-assisted modernization initiative allowed Lombard Odier to achieve remarkable efficiency improvements:
- Code migration speeds increased by 50 to 60 times compared to previous methods.
- Application migrations from legacy relational databases to MongoDB were completed 20 times faster, powered by generative AI.
- Automation of repetitive tasks with AI tools reduced project timelines from days to mere hours, significantly speeding up innovation.
Delivering seamless digital experiences to both private and institutional clients while driving operational efficiencies is a key challenge in the banking sector. As digital transformation and AI continue to disrupt the industry, Lombard Odier is modernizing its systems and integrating advanced technologies to enhance the service and experience it offers its clients. The bank’s GX Program, launched in 2020, is a seven-year initiative designed to modernize Lombard Odier’s banking architecture, accelerate innovation, reduce service disruption, and elevate customer experiences.
Building on a decade-long relationship with MongoDB, Lombard Odier selected MongoDB as the central data platform for its ambitious modernization effort. The bank initially decided to develop its portfolio management system (PMS) on MongoDB. As the bank’s largest application, PMS serves thousands of users, managing shares, bonds, exchange-traded funds, and other financial assets. MongoDB’s scalability was critical in migrating this system, which is used to monitor investments, guide investment decisions, and generate portfolio reports. Additionally, it powers Lombard Odier’s online banking application “MyLO”, a tool used by the bank’s customers for seamless access to their financial information.
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In collaboration with MongoDB, Lombard Odier also co-developed a Modernization Factory—a service that helps businesses overcome the typical barriers of time, cost, and risk often linked to legacy systems. This initiative allowed Lombard Odier to efficiently modernize its infrastructure while eliminating technical debt accumulated over time. The Modernization Factory team at MongoDB worked closely with Lombard Odier to create customized generative AI tooling, including scripts and prompts tailored to the bank’s specific tech stack, which further accelerated the modernization process. This enabled the automation of integration testing and code generation, ensuring smooth deployment and faster project timelines.
Geoffroy De Ridder, Head of Technology and Operations at Lombard Odier, shared his perspective:
“To enhance Lombard Odier’s business strategy, we developed a technology platform that draws on the latest technological innovations to facilitate employees’ day-to-day work and provide clients with individualized investment perspectives. We chose MongoDB because it offers us a cloud-agnostic database platform and an AI modernization approach, which helps automate time-consuming tasks, accelerate the upgrade of existing applications, and migrate them faster than ever before. Having up-to-date technology has made a big impact on our employees and customers, proving to be fast, cost-effective, and reducing maintenance overheads.”
Beyond PMS, Lombard Odier also modernized several other applications, transitioning from its existing Java application server to a next-generation framework. The bank further expanded its partnership with MongoDB, using generative AI on a marketing application called “Publications” to accelerate code migration. Lombard Odier’s developers leveraged the Modernization Factory’s AI-based tooling to speed up regression testing and automatically generate new code at an unprecedented pace.
Sahir Azam, Chief Product Officer at MongoDB, commented:
“Financial institutions with as much history as Lombard Odier undoubtedly have large, complex legacy systems that have supported the business for decades. However, it is important for organizations to constantly evaluate these systems to ensure they continue to meet their needs today and in the future. This can be a daunting task, but we are proud to have worked through this with Lombard Odier to prove that it is not only possible but can be quite simple with the right technology. The transformation Lombard Odier has undertaken positions them to leverage new, cutting-edge technologies that will significantly enhance customer experiences.”
Through this collaboration, MongoDB and Lombard Odier are paving the way for a new era of banking technology, empowering the bank to respond more swiftly to market demands and providing customers with enhanced, modernized digital services.