 Hey, good morning from Las Vegas. It's Lisa Martin and Paul Gillin here. We are on day three of AWS re-invent. We started Monday night. We went all day yesterday. We were going all day today and all day tomorrow. The amount of content coming at you from theCUBE. Great, interesting, fascinating conversations with AWS. Its customers, its ecosystem partners is incredible. Paul, what's your take so far on re-invent? We've been here two and a half days. Well, it's just a fire hose, like I've said before. This morning's keynote was about ML, machine learning and AI. And I stopped counting at 15 new announcements during about a 90 minute keynote. It's just one thing after another. And that's the nature of re-invent, you know? It's always a showcase for new stuff. And they're talking about customers. You're talking about customers. I love it when we have a chance to talk to customers on theCUBE as we are about to do. We are about to talk to one of the nation's leading digital banks. You know them well, Capital One, please welcome Lowly, managing vice president of customer digital experience and payments. Thank you so much, Low, for joining us. Lowly, thank you. I'm glad to be here. Talk a little bit about your role, where it fits within the organization, what it encompasses. Sure, yeah. So I lead the Retail Bank Technology Organization, which is a form of, you know, we have teams that lead digital experiences for our consumers. We look after agent in-person experiences with our cafes and branches, our call centers, and as well as of our Mar-Tech and payments ecosystem. So you're new to Capital One. In the last, less than a year, you know, we all know what we love about, you know, the tagline, what's in your wallet? I think we can all recite that. It's, as I said in the opening, it's one of the nation's leading digital banks. And technology is really core to its business strategy, delivering value to customers. What attracted you to Capital One? And talk about it really as a digital bank that delivers all that value. Of course, yeah. So, you know, I spent 20 years of my career in a digital space and retail and fashion and hospitality. And that is what I love about IT and the industry that I'm in and what I do, which is bringing really great solutions and products to consumers. And getting them excited about an experience in a brand. So I knew early on in my career, I was attracted to really great brands. Brands that wanted to innovate and disrupt the consumer space. So when Capital One gave me an opportunity, I couldn't be happier, right? This is an incredible bank. We have an incredible story. We're a young bank, and yet we are very much on the leading edge of a digital bank experience. I knew we're in an interesting place because as we know, retail banking is declining, or at least bank branches are in decline. More and more people want to do their banking on their mobile apps or through their computers, particularly younger customers. And so you're having to manage all this. What are you doing? How are you tracking to these demographic changes accelerated by the pandemic and recreating the customer experience through multiple channels? Yeah, great question. We want to give our consumers an omnichannel experience irrespective of the few that still want to go into branches or perhaps they want to experience a cafe and while they meet one of our branch ambassadors to talk about their banking, we have consumers that want to go digital. So what we do is that we make sure that we're looking after the consumer holistically, irrespective of the channel. So whether they call into the call center because they need servicing or if they're physically present or they want to carry that on digitally, we make sure that we create super personalized custom experiences. We also work with a bunch of designers that are thinking through the life of a consumer now and their relationship to a bank. It is to your point, it is no longer a branch. That is a ubiquitous experience that we're by and large knowing that we have to figure out and rethink. So we're very lucky to have great designers that work with us and work on what is that experience that we want our consumers to have from the pastries and the coffee and the experience of being with an ambassador and how we can lead them through our iPads and digital experiences to continue to stay with us and for us to service them. You know, if we think about how much banking has changed, especially in the last couple of years when suddenly you couldn't get into a branch even if you wanted to, it's amazing how we have this expectation that on my phone I can do any transaction I want in real time, I'm going to be able to see my balance, I can transfer money, I can make a payment and we don't think about the technology on the back end but it's absolutely critical to powering that experience. Talk about how you're doing that and is there a customer feedback in that process? There is, but that's music to my ears by the way. The fact that you don't think about it tells me we're doing something really right, right? So first and foremost, we are super hyper-visual about security. That is top of mind, we are well managed. The cloud has enabled us to create these infrastructures that are highly secure, that are scalable and that allows us to really focus on innovation. So we use our mobile platform and our apps in that way, right? We know that this is a scalable, secure platform. We create really great products, we create very custom experiences for you that are relevant to you and your family and we create these digital products that are supposed to meet you where you are. But we certainly have this expectation that I'm going to get what I want, it's going to be relevant, it's going to be timely. If not, I'm going to pick up, not the phone. I'm going to go on social media and make a complaint. So from a brand reputation perspective, you guys, what you're doing is clearly going in the right direction. Yeah, yeah, look, we take our bank voice and the voice of the customer extremely seriously. So we have a really large infrastructure from a bank operations perspective. We have our bank voice agents that work with us that give us kind of really real time feedback from our customers. By the time you pick up the phone and call, usually something has gone really wrong, right? So we make sure that we stay lockstep with what our first level agents are hearing. Then we also look into our feedbacks. We have obviously ways to look into our mobile app. We look at all the reviews that we have and incorporate that into how we think about our product and how we invent and innovate on them. Before we turn on the cameras, you said an amazing thing. Capital One doesn't have any data centers anymore. It doesn't have any mainframes anymore. It is fully in the cloud. Understanding that you weren't there in those old days, but how does that change the way you think about new features, about technology, new technology developments for the customer when you don't have that legacy to drag along with you? That it's incredible, right? Our cost efficiency, our production efficiency, how we think about going to the market now is really getting us to focus on the right parts of that product. We don't have to carry a lot of the technical debt. We don't carry that old infrastructure. So the way we develop, the way we design, the way we go to market is a lot faster than it ever was. And the culture is there. The cultural mindset is there to be able to do that. I mean, if you think about who you compete with, some of these institutions that have burned around for 100 years that also have to transform and digitize because the customers expect it, that has to be a seamless process. But their culture also has to be there because changing from being on-prem data centers to being completely in the cloud, it's a big change. Yeah, actually, you hit it, right? It's the cloud transformation is big and hard and sticky. You got to move these workloads. You got to make them native, you got to deploy. But to your point, the harder part really is the culture, because the cloud will then unleash productivity. It will unleash continuous improvement. It will bring product partners along the ride because they have to think differently about what they want to go to the market with, how they think about the cost of those units, how they think about cloud. So in my opinion, Capital One has done an incredible job bringing that entire organization along to this cloud transformation, including our culture, our processes and our people. I know Capital One is proud of the work it's been doing in AI and machine learning. Can you talk about from the retail banking perspective, how is machine learning being applied to improve the customer experience? Yeah, as you know, AI and machine learning is the heart of the bank, is the heart of Capital One. When we started in the early 90s, we were the only bank that was really trying to challenge how we use data to provide better products for our consumers, and that is ingrained in our DNA and everything that we do. So if you were to look at bank, we would start with, you know, from the time you are authenticating yourself, how we think about fraud, right? How do we capture bad actors? All the way to if you were to call into a call center, we use a lot of natural language processing models to make sure that we assess your sentiment, we give you the support that you need, and then of course use that to learn more about how we service you. Interesting, I'm just wondering, do you think about Capital One as a technology company that does banking or a bank that is powered by technology? We are a technology company and we happen to also have a bank. I love that. What are some of the things that you've heard and seen at the show? Obviously, we're hearing numbers between 55 and 70,000 people here. It's crazy and we're only getting a snapshot of that because here we are at Venetian Expo and the conference is going on all over the strip. So what are some of the things that you've heard from AWS that excite you about the partnership going forward? You know, I'll be honest, one of my happiest proud moments when we were talking about Lambda Snapstars yesterday, we actually, our team that is here today was part of the first beta of bringing in Lambda Snapstars and we're super excited because it helps propel our serverless agenda. You know, we're continuing to transform into the cloud. So we have a lot of these partnership opportunities that make me super proud. Well, follow up on serverless because to a lot of people, it's a concept that they don't really understand how to put it at practice. Why, how is serverless a step forward? What does it enable you to do that you couldn't otherwise do? Wow, a bunch. I think first and foremost, it helps us say in a very well managed security-wise, right? It allows us to create automation and it takes away a lot of the heavy lifting that our engineers would have to do otherwise. And the byproduct of that is that we get to go focus on really fun, innovative ideas and we get to go work on product development. We're taking a lot of the great work of the management of the servers out of the engineer's hand and automating it. Banking, of course, is one of the most regulated industries on the planet. Has cloud been able to help you in that respect? Yes, yes, it has. Look, we are in a regulated space, which means everything we do has a ton of scrutiny for the right reasons. So we actually built it into our design. So our design, our products, we design our platforms with security in mind, with the regulations in mind, and make it where it's less of a thought, right? So we obviously spend a lot of time from a risk posture, helping our associates understand, really respecting the responsibility that we have to look after everybody's assets, right? Like what a more incredible job than that. So we spend a lot of time thinking about what is our risk posture? Where is it from what you would imagine their regular scan vulnerabilities all the way to data protection and how do we protect that data and fly? Like there are all things that is our number one job and we spend a ton of time focused on it. That's good, it's very complex, but security is a topic we discuss regularly. We've seen the threat landscape change so dramatically in the last couple of years, bad actors are getting far more sophisticated. They're leveraging the technology, but when it comes to banking, as Paul was talking about from a regulations perspective, from an end customer perspective, we have this expectation that you're going to keep my data secure because nobody wants to be the next headline. Yes, that's right, that's right. And look, we're getting smarter as well, right? So we are able to detect and monitor and go after the bad actors faster. We're doing it in a way that allows us configurability, it gives us time, it gives us speed. But at the same time, we also work as a network, right? So a lot of our banks, in some ways, share a lot of this information to make sure that we're all going after a common enemy. Capital One recently launched a software company, Capital One Software, which is a relatively unusual move by a financial services organization. How has that affected the thinking at the company about what the company is and what other opportunities there might be outside of pure banking? Yeah, absolutely. So Capital One Software is a very exciting new line of business. I think the team that is there is doing some really incredible, innovative work. But what's really interesting is they were talking about our new product, Slingshot. It was born out of our needs, right? We knew that we needed to have better governance or around our data. We created really great tools. And it was very obvious that there was a commercial applicability there. And that is how we will continue to operate, right? As a bank, we're all in the cloud. We're all in the cloud. It will give us the ability to start sharing some of these best practices. And I think the best is yet to come. I think we've got some really good stuff in the pipeline. Anything you can share in the pipeline? No. Tight lips? Tight lips. Excellent. Well, last couple of questions. What's the main theme here? When people walk into the Venetian Expo and they see Capital One next to all these tech companies, what's the main theme that Capital One wants to get across to the greater community? Yeah. Look, our mission is to change banking for good. It always has been our mission. We're very fortunate to be in a position to be tech innovators, and we're fortunate to disrupt. And that's what I want people to get out of it. Excellent. My last question for you, kind of continuing on this theme, if you had, you were going to have the opportunity to create new branding and it's going to go in the cafes and it's going to be like a little billboard inside about Capital One being a technology company that does banking. What do you think that billboard, that sign, would say? I think I'm going to stick with the change banking for good. I mean, that really is at the heart of our mission. It's a nice double message, too, yeah. With technology, with disruption, ultimately that's where our hearts and minds are at. Awesome. It's been great to have you on the program. Thank you for sharing what you're doing at Capital One, how you're working with AWS and also emerging technologies like AI and ML to really create a seamless digital customer experience. We really appreciate your time on your insights. Thank you. All right, for our guests and for Paul Gillan, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live emerging and enterprise tech coverage.