AEM in Financial Services: Accelerating Global Consistency and Compliance

In the highly regulated and fast-evolving world of financial services, digital transformation is not just a competitive advantage—it’s a necessity. As financial institutions expand globally and face mounting regulatory scrutiny, the need for a unified, compliant, and agile digital presence has never been greater. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) stands out as a transformative platform, uniquely positioned to help financial services organizations achieve global brand consistency, streamline compliance, and accelerate digital site deployment. At Publicis Sapient, we have partnered with leading financial institutions to unlock the full potential of AEM, delivering measurable business impact and future-ready digital ecosystems.

The Challenge: Complexity, Compliance, and Consistency

Financial services organizations often operate across multiple regions, each with its own regulatory requirements, languages, and cultural nuances. This complexity is compounded by legacy technology stacks, siloed content management processes, and the need to deliver a consistent brand experience to clients, investors, and partners worldwide. Common challenges include:

Regulatory Compliance: Ensuring all digital content meets local and global regulatory standards, with robust audit trails and approval workflows.
Brand Consistency: Maintaining a unified brand identity across dozens—or even hundreds—of regional websites and digital touchpoints.
Speed to Market: Rapidly launching new sites, campaigns, or product pages in response to market opportunities or regulatory changes.
Operational Efficiency: Reducing manual processes, content duplication, and inefficiencies that drive up costs and slow down innovation.

The Solution: AEM as a Foundation for Global Financial Services

AEM provides a powerful, flexible platform for managing digital experiences at scale. Its capabilities are particularly well-suited to the needs of financial services organizations:

Multi-Site Management: AEM’s Multi-Site Manager enables centralized control of global, multi-country, and multi-language sites, allowing for rapid rollout of new sites while ensuring local compliance and customization.
Reusable Components and Content Fragments: Standardized, reusable components and content fragments drive consistency and efficiency, enabling teams to build and update sites quickly without reinventing the wheel.
Integrated Compliance Workflows: Robust workflow management, including integration with tools like Adobe Workfront, ensures that all content passes through the necessary compliance checks, approvals, and archiving processes—critical for auditability and regulatory adherence.
Dynamic Asset Management: Centralized digital asset management ensures that only approved, up-to-date assets are used across all channels, reducing risk and supporting brand governance.
Cloud-Native Agility: Migrating to AEM as a Cloud Service accelerates deployment, reduces infrastructure overhead, and enables continuous innovation with automated updates and scalability.

Real-World Impact: Case Study Highlights

Global Asset Management Firm: 89% Faster Website Rollouts

A leading global asset management company faced massive inconsistencies across 90+ websites, driven by disparate technologies and regional silos. By partnering with Publicis Sapient to fully leverage AEM, the firm:

Developed 40+ standard, reusable components and a best-practices playbook for site rollouts
Implemented a fully integrated CI/CD pipeline and infrastructure-as-code services
Achieved an 89% reduction in time to build new sites—from nine months to just one
Delivered 29+ sites in nine months, with a 30% reduction in AWS license costs and 100% automated sanity tests

This transformation enabled the firm to maintain global brand consistency, respond rapidly to market changes, and ensure ongoing compliance across all digital properties.

Streamlined Compliance and Content Supply Chain

Another top global asset manager needed to optimize compliance processes and secure all marketing materials in immutable, searchable storage. By implementing a new MarTech architecture with AEM and Adobe Workfront at its core, the organization:

Centralized compliance, creative, and marketing operations workflows
Migrated over 36,000 projects and set up 2,000+ users
Achieved $700K+ in cost savings and a 209% increase in content velocity

The result: a unified global platform supporting regional requirements, with efficient collaboration and reduced manual overhead.

Best Practices for AEM Success in Financial Services

Standardize and Reuse: Develop a library of standard components and content fragments to drive consistency and accelerate site launches.
Automate Compliance: Integrate compliance workflows directly into the content lifecycle, leveraging tools like Workfront for approvals, archiving, and audit trails.
Centralize Asset Management: Use AEM’s DAM to ensure only approved assets are used, reducing risk and supporting brand governance.
Adopt Agile and DevOps: Implement CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code to enable rapid, reliable deployments and updates.
Plan for Global-Local Balance: Use AEM’s multi-site and multi-language capabilities to balance global brand standards with local market needs and regulatory requirements.
Leverage Cloud and AI: Migrate to AEM as a Cloud Service for scalability and continuous innovation; explore AI-driven automation for content creation, translation, and metadata management.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Underestimating Change Management: Success depends on empowering teams with training, clear processes, and a culture of continuous improvement.
Neglecting Governance: Without strong governance, inconsistencies and compliance risks can quickly re-emerge.
Over-Customization: Excessive customization can increase complexity and slow down future upgrades—leverage AEM’s out-of-the-box capabilities wherever possible.

Why Publicis Sapient?

With over a decade of partnership with Adobe and deep expertise in financial services, Publicis Sapient is uniquely positioned to help organizations realize the full value of AEM. Our approach combines strategy, engineering, and industry insight to deliver:

Accelerated time-to-market and measurable cost savings
Robust compliance and governance frameworks
Scalable, future-ready digital ecosystems
Empowered teams and sustainable operational excellence

Ready to accelerate your digital transformation with AEM? Connect with Publicis Sapient to learn how we can help you achieve global consistency, compliance, and competitive advantage in financial services.