Industry-Focused Engineering Transformation: Financial Services Edition

The financial services sector stands at the crossroads of rapid digital innovation and stringent regulatory demands. Banks, insurers, and other financial institutions face the dual challenge of modernizing legacy systems while ensuring security, compliance, and agility in a landscape shaped by evolving customer expectations and disruptive digital-native competitors. Publicis Sapient’s engineering and technology services are purpose-built to address these unique challenges, enabling financial organizations to unlock new value, accelerate digital product launches, and future-proof their operations.

Financial institutions are often burdened by decades-old legacy systems, fragmented data, and siloed operations. These challenges are compounded by the need to comply with ever-changing regulations, manage risk, and deliver seamless digital experiences to customers who expect instant, secure, and personalized services. The cost of inaction is high: slow time-to-market, increased operational risk, and missed opportunities for innovation.

At Publicis Sapient, we believe that true digital transformation in financial services requires more than just technology upgrades—it demands a holistic engineering mindset. Our approach is grounded in:

• Agile Engineering: We embed agile principles across teams, enabling rapid iteration, continuous learning, and faster delivery of new products and features. This shift from project-based to product-based thinking ensures that customer and business value are at the heart of every initiative.
• Cloud Migration: Leveraging our deep expertise and strong partnerships with leading cloud providers, we help financial institutions migrate critical workloads to secure, scalable cloud environments. This not only reduces costs and increases agility but also enhances compliance and disaster recovery capabilities.
• Microservices & APIs: We modernize monolithic legacy systems by engineering microservices and API platforms. This modular approach enables stronger collaboration, accelerates digital innovation, and allows for the seamless integration of new technologies, including AI and advanced analytics.
• Security and Compliance by Design: Security and regulatory compliance are embedded from the outset. Our solutions ingrain robust controls, automated testing, and continuous monitoring to ensure that every digital product meets the highest standards for data protection and regulatory adherence.
• Data-Driven Value Creation: We unlock the power of data by connecting and refining it across the enterprise, making it actionable for both compliance and customer experience initiatives. Our data modernization strategies enable real-time insights, predictive analytics, and personalized services.

One of the UK’s largest banks partnered with Publicis Sapient to revolutionize its engineering organization and accelerate digital transformation. Facing the challenge of extensive legacy systems and the need to deliver new digital products at speed, Lloyds Banking Group adopted a framework based on lean methods, agile principles, and value stream analysis.

Key outcomes included:

• 20–30% reduction in time from backlog to production, enabling faster speed-to-market for new features and regulatory changes.
• 10–20% reduction in effort to make architectural and operational changes, resulting in significant cost savings and increased agility.
• 30% improvement in quality, as measured by a reduction in post-deployment defects.
• Enhanced employee satisfaction, with a measurable improvement in the people happiness index.

This transformation was achieved through a combination of value-focused analysis, prioritization of high-impact interventions, and the use of accelerators to increase the pace and success of change. The result: a resilient, future-ready engineering organization capable of thriving in a rapidly changing financial landscape.

Our financial services engineering leaders emphasize that modernization is not a one-time project but a continuous journey. As Jason Steiner, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Consulting at Publicis Sapient, notes: “Modernization is the absolute, required table stakes to successfully execute transformation. It needs to be done not to solve a specific problem but overall to create a resilient organization that has sustainable innovation.”

Tilak Doddapaneni, Global Head of Engineering and Technology, adds: “Digital engineering is about looking at the way you do everything, and asking, ‘can we do better?’ With the right digital engineering strategy, yes you can. We partner with businesses every day to harness the power of the cloud, strategically embrace AI, and squeeze every drop of value from your data.”

Financial services organizations that embrace engineering transformation are better positioned to respond to disruption, launch innovative products, and meet regulatory demands with confidence. Whether you are just starting your modernization journey or looking to scale and sustain your progress, Publicis Sapient is your partner for industry-focused engineering transformation.

Connect with our experts to learn how we can help your organization thrive in the digital age.