From legacy operations to living digital business: a new path for financial services


For banks, insurers and capital markets firms, digital transformation is no longer about putting old processes on new screens. The market has moved beyond digitizing forms, accelerating handoffs or layering channels on top of legacy infrastructure. Today, the real challenge is more fundamental: how to redesign the business so it can continuously adapt to changing customer expectations, regulatory pressure, risk realities and competitive disruption.

That is the shift from legacy operations to living digital business.

A living digital business is not defined by a single transformation program or a one-time technology rollout. It is built to learn, evolve and improve. It connects strategy to execution, customer need to operating model, and data to decision-making. It treats digital not as an IT initiative, but as a business capability that shapes how the organization thinks, organizes, operates and behaves.

In financial services, that distinction matters. Customers now question basic assumptions that once defined the industry: Why should opening an account require friction? Why does trade finance need to be so complex? Why should a mortgage process feel opaque? Why should fraud prevention create poor experiences for legitimate customers? These are not channel questions. They are business design questions.

Moving from digitization to reimagination

Many financial institutions have invested heavily in modernization, but still find themselves constrained by fragmented systems, siloed teams and project-based thinking. They may have strong capabilities in one area and progress in another, yet struggle to connect them into a coherent transformation engine. The result is familiar: initiatives launch, value appears, and momentum fades.

The institutions pulling ahead are taking a different approach. They are moving from linear delivery models to integrated, product-centric transformation. Instead of starting with requirements and passing work from one function to another, they bring together strategy, product, experience, engineering, and data and AI to solve for business outcomes end to end.

This is the power of the SPEED model:
In financial services, these capabilities are most powerful when they operate together rather than as separate workstreams. That is what enables institutions to move faster, reduce complexity and create value that lasts.

Reimagining the journeys that matter most

The path to becoming a living digital business often begins with core journeys where customer expectations, operational friction and business impact intersect.

**Onboarding and account opening**

For retail and commercial banks, onboarding is one of the clearest examples of why digitizing a legacy process is not enough. A digital front end alone does not solve for fragmented verification, redundant data capture, disconnected servicing or inconsistent risk controls. Reimagining onboarding means designing the full journey around speed, trust and usability while connecting the experience to the underlying operating model.

**Fraud management**

Fraud is a high-stakes test of digital maturity. Financial institutions need to strengthen protection without creating unnecessary friction for legitimate users. AI is already helping make fraud detection more seamless, but its value increases dramatically when embedded in a broader business transformation effort. That means combining intelligent detection with better journey design, clearer decisioning, modern engineering and strong governance around trust, bias and accountability.

**Mortgage risk and assessment**

Mortgage processes expose the limitations of fragmented data, manual underwriting models and disconnected customer journeys. AI is making risk management and risk assessment more seamless than before, but technology alone is not the answer. Institutions need to rethink how data flows across the journey, how decisions are surfaced, how customers are guided and how teams are equipped to manage exceptions and compliance requirements with confidence.

**Customer experience across channels**

Financial services firms increasingly compete on relevance, not just products. Customers compare every interaction to the best digital experiences they have anywhere, not just within banking or insurance. That raises the bar for simplicity, transparency and responsiveness. Institutions that win are those that connect customer experience with engineering, product management and data, rather than treating experience as a layer added at the end.

Why continuous product thinking matters

One of the biggest shifts for financial services leaders is moving from project logic to product logic. Legacy transformation efforts often begin with a business case, move through lengthy requirement cycles and end at launch. But customer needs, market conditions and regulatory expectations do not stop changing once a program goes live.

A living digital business works differently. It treats core journeys and capabilities as products that must continuously evolve. Data informs what to improve next. Experience design reveals where friction remains. Engineering makes iteration possible. Strategy keeps effort focused on the highest-value outcomes.

This mindset is especially important in regulated industries, where complexity can tempt organizations into defending the status quo. But preserving old structures in a digital market often creates greater risk over time: slower response to customer behavior, higher servicing cost, weaker adaptability and growing competitive exposure.

Making digital a CEO priority

For financial services firms, the move to living digital business cannot sit only within technology or operations. It requires business leadership. Transformation at this level is not simply about deploying tools. It is about reimagining how the enterprise creates value.

That is why the most effective transformations are CEO-level priorities, supported by strong technology, product and data leadership. AI, in particular, is forcing a new choice. Organizations can use it to digitize what they already do, or they can use it to become more transformative—to redesign journeys, modernize decision-making, improve efficiency and create more relevant products and experiences.

The winners will do the latter.

Human-centered, AI-powered transformation

As financial institutions scale AI, the human dimension becomes even more important. Adoption depends not only on technical performance, but on whether new capabilities feel useful, intuitive and trustworthy. That applies to customers navigating digital journeys, employees using intelligent tools and leaders making decisions with AI-generated insight.

A human-centered approach helps firms balance automation with confidence. It encourages experimentation while addressing ethics, bias and governance. And it ensures that AI strengthens the experience rather than undermining it.

This is especially critical in financial services, where trust is the business model.

Build for change, not just for launch

The financial services industry is under pressure to do more than modernize. Firms must grow while improving efficiency, reducing friction, managing risk and meeting rising expectations from customers, regulators and investors. Those outcomes will not come from digitizing yesterday’s business more efficiently.

They come from building a business that can adapt continuously.

Publicis Sapient helps financial services organizations make that shift by bringing together strategy, product, experience, engineering, and data and AI in one integrated model. The goal is not simply to deliver digital initiatives. It is to help banks, insurers and capital markets firms become digital at the core—able to redesign critical journeys, unlock operational value and keep evolving as the market changes.

Legacy businesses were built for stability. Living digital businesses are built for change.

In financial services, that difference is becoming the difference between keeping up and leading what comes next.