In today’s digital-first financial landscape, automation and cloud-native platforms have become the backbone of operational efficiency. Yet, as financial institutions accelerate their digital transformation, a new imperative has emerged: ensuring that these automated systems are resilient—capable of withstanding outages, cyber threats, and unpredictable black swan events. At Publicis Sapient, we believe that true operational continuity goes beyond automation. It requires a holistic approach to resiliency engineering, integrating advanced Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices, chaos testing, and regulatory-driven resilience requirements into the very fabric of financial platforms.
Financial services institutions are under constant pressure from market volatility, regulatory scrutiny, and evolving customer expectations. Recent global events—ranging from pandemics to geopolitical shifts and sudden market swings—have exposed the vulnerabilities of even the most sophisticated digital platforms. Outages and disruptions are no longer rare; they are a real and present risk, with the potential to impact millions of customers and erode trust in seconds.
Legacy systems, once siloed and isolated, are now interconnected through APIs, microservices, and cloud-native architectures. This interconnectedness, while enabling innovation and agility, also increases the complexity and potential points of failure. When a trading platform or payment system fails during a market surge, the consequences are immediate and severe—both financially and reputationally. Regulatory bodies in the UK, US, and beyond are responding with new requirements for operational resilience, making it essential for financial institutions to proactively address these risks.
At Publicis Sapient, resiliency engineering is not an afterthought—it is a core pillar of our digital transformation strategy for financial services. Our approach is grounded in three key pillars:
SRE is the formal discipline of building and operating reliable software systems. We embed SRE principles into every stage of platform development and operation, ensuring that reliability, availability, and performance are continuously measured and improved. Our teams implement robust monitoring, logging, and alerting frameworks, providing real-time visibility into system health and enabling proactive issue detection and resolution.
To truly understand how platforms behave under stress, we integrate chaos testing into our engineering lifecycle. By simulating failures—such as network outages, service degradations, or sudden spikes in demand—we identify weaknesses and blind spots before they can impact customers. Our proprietary Resiliency Maturity Model allows us to assess platforms holistically, from individual application components to critical downstream dependencies, and recommend targeted improvements.
Financial institutions face a growing array of regulatory requirements focused on operational resilience. Our teams are deeply experienced in interpreting and implementing these mandates, ensuring that platforms not only meet but exceed compliance standards. We help clients embed disaster recovery, backup, and failover capabilities into their cloud-native environments, and automate compliance controls within CI/CD pipelines for continuous assurance.
Our work with leading financial institutions demonstrates the tangible benefits of a resiliency-first approach:
Resiliency engineering is as much about culture as it is about technology. We work with clients to instill an end-to-end SRE mindset, upskill teams, and foster cross-functional collaboration between technology, risk, and compliance functions. Our agile, data-driven approach ensures that risk management is embedded early and often, with automated controls and real-time dashboards providing dynamic insights to governance forums.
In a world where outages and disruptions are inevitable, the ability to recover quickly—and even prevent failures before they occur—becomes a key differentiator. Publicis Sapient’s resiliency engineering services empower financial institutions to:
By going beyond automation to engineer true operational continuity, we help our clients build trust, safeguard their reputation, and unlock new opportunities for growth in an unpredictable world.
Ready to fortify your financial platforms? Connect with Publicis Sapient to learn how our resiliency engineering expertise can help you achieve operational continuity and thrive in the digital age.