Adobe, IBM team up on marketing software for banking industry

Adobe Inc and International Business Machines Corp said on Tuesday they are teaming up to make marketing software easier to use for banks that face strict controls on how customer data must be handled.

Banks handle sensitive customer data that is tightly regulated by the US government and simple functions on other websites - such as presenting a form to collect customer data - become more complex when building web pages for functions such as mortgage applications.

The plan is for Adobe's software to run in IBM's cloud system that has received regulatory approval for use by banks, the companies said, which will lead to more banking functions becoming totally digital over time.

"Even now, for mortgage applications, for example, some of it is on paper, some of it is online," Anil Chakravarthy, general manager of digital experience for Adobe, said in an interview.

"The possibility of being able to handle all of that sensitive data 100 percent digitally, that's the possibility that this opens up."

IBM will also be able to connect the cloud-based system to a bank's internal stores of customer data, which "gives them much more flexibility to pick and choose on the data that they might put into a marketing campaign," Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president for IBM Global Markets, also said.