Financial institutions are at a crossroads. Decades of incremental change, bolt-on systems, and labor-intensive service models have left banks and insurers with a staggering $2 trillion in accumulated tech debt. This legacy burden is more than a technical nuisance—it’s a structural liability that stifles innovation, drains budgets, and locks organizations into operating models ill-suited for today’s digital economy. Despite years of digital ambition and billions spent on modernization, most large financial institutions are still anchored to foundations never designed for the speed, agility, or intelligence that modern markets demand.
Traditional approaches—outsourcing, staff augmentation, and piecemeal automation—have failed to break the cycle. Instead, they’ve often perpetuated complexity, normalizing stagnation with armies of offshore workers and incremental improvements. The result? Only 30% of organizations report having fully modernized their core applications, while the rest are stuck managing the past rather than building the future.
Enter AI—not as another tool in the box, but as the jackhammer capable of demolishing the barriers of tech debt. The latest advances in AI, particularly agentic automation and generative models, are fundamentally changing what’s possible:
The impact is profound. In a recent study, 80% of financial services leaders believe AI will finally move the modernization needle, and four in five want to pivot away from labor-first service models. The message is clear: AI is not just an accelerator—it’s the foundation for a new era of outcome-driven, adaptive systems.
The traditional IT services model—measured in hours billed and bodies deployed—is obsolete. Financial institutions are demanding a shift to productized, AI-powered capabilities delivered as software, not as staff augmentation. This new paradigm, often called "Services-as-Software," is defined by:
This is not a distant vision. Three in four enterprise leaders now expect a pivot from staff augmentation to Services-as-Software within the next few years. The commercial model is evolving too, with a clear preference for subscription, outcome-based, and consumption-driven pricing—models that align cost with value delivered.
At Publicis Sapient, we’ve reimagined modernization for the AI era. Our approach is built on two core innovations:
Slingshot is our proprietary, AI-driven delivery platform designed to smash through tech debt and accelerate modernization. It brings together:
With Slingshot, multidisciplinary SPEED teams (Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering, Data & AI) connect business goals directly to technical execution, ensuring modernization is both rapid and aligned to strategic outcomes.
Bodhi is our enterprise-grade platform for agentic AI, enabling cognitive, context-aware, and scalable transformation. It powers:
Together, Slingshot and Bodhi enable financial institutions to move beyond incremental change, delivering modernization that is faster, smarter, and more resilient.
Our AI-powered approach is already delivering tangible results for leading financial institutions:
These are not isolated successes—they are proof points of a new model for modernization in financial services.
To break free from tech debt and realize the full potential of AI, financial institutions must:
The post-tech-debt enterprise is not a fantasy. It’s a reality for those bold enough to rewire how they build, partner, govern, and deliver. With AI as the jackhammer and a new operating model as the blueprint, financial institutions can:
Publicis Sapient is uniquely positioned to help financial institutions smash through tech debt and accelerate AI-driven modernization. Our integrated SPEED capabilities, AI-powered delivery models, and deep industry expertise enable us to deliver meaningful, measurable impact—at scale and at speed.
If you’re ready to break free from the legacy trap and build a future-ready, adaptive financial institution, let’s talk.
Publicis Sapient: Helping financial services thrive in the brave pursuit of next.