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Elevating Wealth Management through Strategic Technology Integration and Cloud Migration
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Global Banking & Finance Review®
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By P.Venkatesh, Director – Thought Leadership, Maveric Systems Limited
By P.Venkatesh, Director – Thought Leadership, Maveric Systems Limited
As banks navigate the ever-evolving landscape of wealth management, their strategic investment in robust IT architectures and cloud adoption prepares them to adapt and innovate effectively. This forward-thinking approach enhances their ability to manage and protect assets while equipping them to leverage emerging technologies and trends. As a result, they remain competitive in a rapidly changing financial environment. A leading Dutch bank revitalized its operational framework by implementing a robust technology architecture to meet future demands and upgrade its wealth management systems. The bank achieved substantial performance improvements by leveraging cloud technology.
The Dutch bank aimed to establish a robust technology architecture capable of meeting future demands, supported by two main strategies: organizing for change and process re-engineering. Specifically, in upgrading its wealth management systems, the bank pursued three primary objectives: product improvement, enhancing operational efficiency, and preparing for future scalability through cloud migration.
The bank adopted a strategy of upgrading to newer versions every 2-3 years to address the need for enhanced functionalities in its core banking software. This approach introduced new out-of-the-box features—standard functionalities provided by the software vendor that offer immediate benefits without requiring custom development. By leveraging these built-in enhancements, the bank was able to stay current with technological advancements and industry best practices.
Agile teams within the bank were set up to customize the core system to meet specific needs and balance new out-of-the-box features with local requirements. These agile teams focus on delivering features for specific business areas such as Customer Setup, Payments, Securities, etc. Apart from this, another team comprising cloud specialists was set up for cloud migration. This approach ensured the system remained innovative and tailored, optimizing performance, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and adaptability, reducing the production release cycle of the bank from six weeks to just three weeks.
Previously, derivative orders were manually input and sent to the broker through a separate OMS system. Once the team executed these trades, they manually entered them into the core banking system, leading to a process prone to errors. To enhance operational efficiency, the bank introduced Straight Through Processing (STP) by integrating its core banking system with the Order Management System (OMS) using Financial Information Exchange (FIX) messages. This integration significantly reduced manual workload and minimized errors in trade processing, successfully transitioning from manual to automated processes.
The bank strategically plans to transition its Belgium private banking business to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. To do this, the bank chose a phased migration instead of adopting a big-bang approach. They started moving their core banking platform to the cloud as a preparatory step. Implementing Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines enabled scalable expansion allowing the bank to extend this architecture to its operations in Germany and France while ensuring compliance with different regulatory and operational requirements.
Frequent enhancements to the platform were crucial for the bank to maintain a competitive edge. The bank made significant process changes, such as lowering the number of test environments for distinct testing phases. System integration tests were combined with end-to-end tests. This, coupled with automatic deployments and zero-touch automation, significantly reduced the time to market. Targeted regression tests conducted after each delivery deployment facilitated a shift-left approach, moving testing activities earlier in development. This shift-left strategy not only ensured higher quality and better test coverage but also provided continuous feedback and accelerated time to market.
Technological foundations such as Temenos Continuous Deployment (TCD), supported by tools like Bitbucket for version control, Jenkins for CI-CD automation, Kubernetes for Orchestration, Docker for Containerization, and Selenium for test automation, were crucial in facilitating the bank’s successful upgrade. These technologies enabled seamless integration and deployment, providing a scalable framework for future technological advancements and enhancements.
The bank’s implementation of advanced technology architecture and cloud-based solutions was a strategic move to mitigate challenges posed by market fluctuations, positioning the bank for sustained growth. Maveric’s Wealth Management report highlights that financial enterprises must re-engineer business models by leveraging new-age digital technologies to remain competitive ahead of the industry’s next major ecosystem shift. The upgrade to a robust technology architecture played a crucial role in revitalizing the bank’s operational framework, demonstrating the transformative power of modern technology.
Cloud migration is the process of moving data, applications, and other business elements from on-premises infrastructure to cloud-based environments, enhancing flexibility and scalability.
Operational efficiency refers to the ability of an organization to deliver products or services in the most cost-effective manner without compromising quality.
Wealth management is a comprehensive financial service that combines investment management, financial planning, and other services to help clients manage and grow their wealth.
Agile methodology is a project management approach that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and customer feedback, allowing teams to adapt quickly to changes.
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