General Bank of Canada (GBC) has entered into a strategic partnership with Thought Machine to support the shift towards a cloud-native technology architecture.
As part of this collaboration, GBC is set to transfer its new banking product development to Vault Core, Thought Machine’s cloud-native platform, with the bank benefiting from the modern, flexible infrastructure required to support its strategy and accelerate advancement.
Since the start of its operations back in 2005, GBC has been centring its efforts on supporting customers in achieving their goals by delivering optimal loan and deposit products. The financial institution's primary focus has been on lending opportunities in automotive, aviation, and commercial real estate.
Future-proofing GBC’s operations
Vault Core, a universal core banking platform, was built from scratch using Thought Machine, thereby avoiding the use of legacy code during development. Its real-time architecture and flexible product engine allow banks to create, launch, and manage a range of financial products from the ground up. Deploying Vault Core will enable GBC to gain increased configurability, efficiency, and agility that were previously unavailable in its environment. According to Thought Machine’s officials, as GBC’s goal demands a reliable and scalable banking platform, the company’s Vault Core has been developed to provide this, offering a real-time, universal product engine capable of allowing the bank to expand efficiently and manufacture its products to the Canadian fintech community.
Furthermore, gradually integrating Vault Core is set to allow GBC to solidify its position as a financial product manufacturer, with the bank planning to operate as a high-value Bank-to-Business-to-Consumer (B2B2C) provider, utilising its bank charter to develop products and deliver them through a range of distribution channels and partners.
Besides GBC, Thought Machine’s Vault Core platform is leveraged by banks and financial institutions globally, including Intesa Sanpaolo, Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered, SEB, Zopa Bank, Atom Bank, and Curve, among others. At the end of August 2025, Shawbrook also went live on Thought Machine’s Vault Core, aiming to accelerate product innovation in commercial SME lending. Through this move, the bank sought to scale up its commercial SME lending, launch new capabilities, and boost automation across back-end processes.
