#Japan #Digital Transformation #Tokyo #Financial Technology #BluStellar

NEC's Enhanced BluStellar Financial Modernization Program

In a fast-evolving financial landscape, NEC is taking significant strides to fortify the resilience and competitiveness of financial institutions. The enhanced "BluStellar Financial Modernization Program" is designed to support the modernization of IT systems, thus addressing managerial challenges faced by financial organizations. With this evolution, NEC aims to support business model transformations and sustainable growth in the fast-paced financial market.

Background

Since its inception, the BluStellar program has been anchored in three core concepts: transforming business models focused on growth areas, ensuring sustained growth through ongoing responsiveness to environmental changes, and securing resilience. The financial sector is currently experiencing unprecedented changes in the business environment. The complexities are increasing with emerging AI solutions, cybersecurity threats, rapidly expanding digital channels, and the constant need for updates in regulations and guidelines. To effectively confront these changes, it is imperative for financial institutions to embrace advanced technologies while continuously refreshing their IT foundations, operations, and applications.

However, the task of gathering and validating cutting-edge technologies requires high-level expertise and speed, posing a considerable burden for financial institutions to handle independently. Moreover, addressing security and compliance remains a significant challenge, projected to persist in the future. With the increasing variety of cloud and application options, there is a pressing need for financial institutions to choose the most suitable services that align with their strategic goals and to remain flexible in updating their solutions.

In response to these challenges, NEC is enhancing its BluStellar program to speed up the collection and validation of advanced technologies, streamline IT operations through collaboration, and strengthen partnerships that treat cloud and application services as an integrated offering.

Initiatives

NEC has restructured the offerings within the financial modernization program based on customer challenges. The program is now systematically divided into two categories: the "Business Transformation Program" and the "Next-Generation Infrastructure Program," incorporating key initiatives aimed at expanding response options for financial institutions facing rapidly changing market and business environments.

To stay ahead in today's landscape, a new research center is being established in North America, aimed at enhancing technological strategic processes. Financial institutions have faced challenges in keeping abreast of advanced technology trends, particularly in AI and digital fields. To alleviate this, NEC is preparing to launch the "NEC Global Research & Incubation Center" next year, leveraging the North American startup ecosystem to enhance processes for collecting, validating, and implementing technology. The domestic "Financial Digital Innovation Technology Development Office" will work closely with this new center.

Expanding Collaborative Frameworks

As the demand for ongoing security and compliance increases, financial institutions experience lengthy cycles and high operational costs when addressing these needs independently. To counteract these issues, NEC is promoting initiatives to ease individual burdens, allowing effective, efficient, and secure AI utilization. This includes collaborative development of agents with shared expertise among multiple financial institutions, and establishing common operational rules and guidelines for security.

Strengthening Partner Collaborations

With new services emerging constantly, many financial institutions struggle with adapting to and selecting the optimal solutions from a growing array of options. To address these challenges, NEC is providing an integrated approach from infrastructure to applications and AI utilization. Strengthening collaborations with partner companies will lead to the creation of comprehensive offerings, allowing clients to apply standardized templates and proven components, thereby easing the burdens of complex technology selection and validation.

Through this initiative, partnerships will be expanded with major cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, and Oracle, as well as application providers like Salesforce and ServiceNow. The goal is to deliver timely offerings for AI development, operational automation, and data utilization in line with market trends and technology advancements.

Conclusion

With a long history of supporting core systems and operations for financial institutions, NEC is leveraging its strengths in advanced technology validation, in-depth knowledge of industry-specific security and compliance, and a broad partner ecosystem in cloud, applications, and AI. The enhanced BluStellar program will facilitate the transformation of financial institutions safely and swiftly, paving the way for innovation and improved competitiveness.

The recent announcement has received endorsements from notable companies such as Amazon Web Services Japan, Salesforce Japan, ServiceNow Japan, and Microsoft Japan, all of which express their support for NEC's enhanced program and its potential to foster growth in the financial sector.

NEC will also participate in the upcoming FIN/SUM 2026 event to engage with stakeholders and share insights on implementing data-driven management in the financial industry.

For queries, please contact:
NEC Digital Finance Division
E-Mail: [email protected]