02 · Delivered
Transforming the core of a next-generation digital bank
Untangling thirty years of accumulated complexity while changing the system that every part of the bank depends on.
I helped lead the implementation of Temenos Transact R23 as a bank-wide transformation, coordinating the technology, operating change, partner ecosystem, testing and transition into managed services.
A core banking system is never only a system
Over thirty years, banking architecture adapts to each immediate need. Systems are customised, interfaces multiply and local workarounds become operational dependencies. The result resembles a spiderweb: pull one thread without understanding the whole structure and the effect can travel somewhere unexpected.
The estate was also a mixture of technologies with different ages, capacities and readiness for change. Replacing the core therefore meant understanding not only the target platform, but every surrounding system, process and team that depended on the existing one.
The dependency map extended across the entire bank
Core banking touches customer servicing, products, payments, finance, operations, risk, channels, reporting and control functions. Each area sees the transformation through a different lens and carries a different operational risk.
My role required aligning those perspectives around one delivery path. Discovery workshops surfaced current behaviour, exceptions and customisation requirements. Those findings were translated into clear functional specifications, prioritised decisions and traceable delivery items rather than left as informal knowledge inside individual teams.
- Cross-bank discovery and dependency mapping
- Customisation requirements translated into functional specifications
- Decision, scope and change traceability
- Business and technology alignment around shared outcomes
Coordination became a technical discipline
The programme involved hundreds of people across architecture, infrastructure, development, integration, data, testing, operations, finance and business teams, alongside several delivery partners. Progress depended on these streams converging at the right moments, not merely completing their own plans.
Jira and Confluence supported the working system for requirements, delivery status, decisions and knowledge. Around those tools sat the harder orchestration: budgets, environments, partner mobilisation, access, release dependencies, workshop cadence and even the physical flow and seating of large teams moving through different phases of the programme.
- Integrated planning across technical and non-technical workstreams
- Environment, access and release readiness
- Partner capacity, mobilisation and delivery governance
- Budget, dependency and decision control
Changing the platform also meant changing the operating model
The transition to managed services was a major programme in its own right. Bringing an external team into the inner workings of a bank requires more than transferring documents. They need context, controlled access, operating authority and a clear place within the bank's technology and risk processes.
I managed the integration of that service into the delivery and run model. This included knowledge transfer, change workflows, incident and problem management, capacity planning, code and configuration preservation, escalation paths and accountability between the bank, the platform vendor and delivery partners.
- Knowledge transfer and operational acceptance
- Change, incident and problem-management integration
- Capacity and service-governance planning
- Code, configuration and knowledge preservation
Non-functional testing defined whether we were truly ready
A core can pass functional testing and still be unsafe to operate. The deeper questions concern what happens under pressure: whether processing remains stable at peak load, whether long-running activity degrades the system, how components recover from failure and whether monitoring reveals trouble early enough to act.
Non-functional testing therefore covered performance, load, stress, endurance, resilience and recovery behaviour. Disaster recovery had to be treated as an executable operating capability, not a document: could teams fail over, restore service and protect data within the bank's accepted recovery objectives?
- Performance, load, stress and endurance testing
- Failure, recovery and resilience scenarios
- Operational monitoring and capacity evidence
- Disaster-recovery execution and confidence
The real transformation was controlled interdependence
Temenos Transact R23 provided the new core platform and a path toward a more modern, cloud-hosted banking foundation. The difficult work was making every dependency around it move with sufficient control: requirements, integrations, environments, people, partners, operations and service transition.
The lasting lesson is that core transformation cannot be managed as a large software installation. It is a portfolio of tightly coupled changes whose value appears only when the technology, the operating model and the people are ready at the same time.