Databricks Releases Lakehouse for Financial Services

Databricks first launched its lakehouse architecture in 2017, combining elements of data warehouses, data lakes, and streaming data analytics in a move that has paid off—literally and figuratively—in ensuing years as Databricks accrued billions in funding and ever-higher valuations. Now, the company is revealing its latest lakehouse product: Lakehouse for Financial Services, aimed at fintech users across the banking, insurance, and capital markets sectors.

The company says that Lakehouse for Financial Services supports real-time analytics, business intelligence, and AI capabilities on “all data types” through a multi-cloud environment. There are, the release says, specific solutions included for important financial use cases like compliance and regulatory reporting, post-trade analysis, risk management, fraud detection, and open banking.

Databricks also highlighted two sets of integrations: first, integration between the Lakehouse for Financial Services and Legend, a project aiming to create an open ecosystem for financial data; second, integration between Databricks’ Delta Sharing feature and financial data providers like Nasdaq, Factset, and Intercontinental Exchange.

“For financial service institutions around the world looking to modernize and innovate, the two most important assets are no longer its capital or sheer scale, but its data and its people,” said Junta Nakai, regional vice president for Databricks. “The Databricks Lakehouse for Financial Services brings these two critical resources together on a secure, collaborative and open source-based data platform that allows FSIs to leverage data across clouds and drive innovation with AI.”

As part of the release, Databricks is touting partnerships with financial consulting firms like Avanade and Deloitte. (The latter’s FinServ Governed Data Platform, for instance, is a cloud-based, regulatorily compliant platform for financial institutions.) They also highlighted work with TD Bank, which has been using Databricks on Microsoft Azure to enable richer analytics.

“At TD, our data and analytics capabilities are central to innovating for our customers in new and meaningful ways,” said Jeff Martin, SVP for corporate platforms at TD Bank. “By consolidating our data onto the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and leveraging Databricks, we are further enhancing and evolving the customer experience and supporting new product development.”

Databricks also added a new executive to fuel this expansion into fintech, along with “other regulated sectors” like public sector work and healthcare: Michael Hartman, the new SVP of regulated industries.

The announcement of Lakehouse for Financial Services comes on the heels of Databricks’ announcement of Lakehouse for Retail just a month ago. Lakehouse for Retail provides functionality like real-time streaming data ingestion, demand forecasting, recommendation engines, and more.

Last August, Databricks concluded a $1.6 billion Series H round of funding, which landed it at a $38 billion valuation.

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