Insights from Lloyds and Santander UK

With the holiday season in full swing and a global recession predicted sometime in the new year, banks remain committed to investing in modernized technology through digital banking transformation efforts vs. traditional cost-cutting routes. 

Creating personalized, frictionless customer experiences — as well as adopting big data and artificial intelligence (AI) to predict customer preferences, reduce risk, create efficiencies, and pursue new sources of revenue — will continue to remain top-of-mind for the banking industry well into 2023, according to the 2023 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook from Deloitte Insights.  

In addition to the uncertain economic outlook, banks will continue to face other marketplace challenges in their quest to innovate. 

Those challenges include: 

• the battle for digital talent to build the advanced data capabilities needed to ward off tech competitors 
• the establishment of a new Agile operating model to prioritize products for digital-savvy consumers and scale processes, whether the goal is to quickly respond to cyber security regulations to build brand trust or to identify the best revenue sources, such as third-party open banking partners in fintech and technology. 

The good news is that overcoming the myriad of obstacles, risks, and threats can be rewarding if executives continue to embrace change and leave behind legacy processes. 

“Retail banking customers are expecting more from their banks. In particular, they are clamoring for a superior cross-channel experience and hands-on guidance during challenging times. These heightened demands will require banks to go beyond a product lens and create customer experiences that are data-driven, consistent across channels and complete with personalized advice,” reports Deloitte.  

Read Next: Digital Transformation in Banking: Why it Matters Now More Than Ever 

A single platform for championing processes and people 

To transform successfully, bank executives need to consider the three common elements of organizational change – people, processes, and technology. This means:  

1. Choosing technology that gives business leaders the visibility to make quick, intelligent decisions related to revenue, cost, and risk appeal to their customers.  
2. Committing to being a people champion for digital transformation—nurturing workers through the new and challenging learning curve of using Agile methods for planning, prioritizing, and getting work done. 
3. Embracing the need to revamp processes and refine them regularly at all levels of the organization.    

McKinsey also underscores the need for a three-pronged approach to banking transformation: “The reasons most core-banking-system transformations fail are usually rooted in missteps around people, processes, or technology,” says McKinsey. 

Using a single platform to connect people and continuously improve processes will better position banks to succeed in achieving lifelong customers and keeping compliance under control.  

Learn more about how TechRuum helps banks achieve their digital transformation goals with these banking case studies from Santander UK and Lloyds Banking Group.  

Santander UK 

Santander UK is a large retail and commercial bank based in the United Kingdom and a wholly owned subsidiary of the major global bank Banco Santander. The organization serves 14.4 million active customers through digital channels alongside a network of branches and business centers that extend across Europe, North America, and Latin America. 

Due to numerous economic factors, Santander UK needed to improve the time-to-market for their products and solutions to outpace the competition.  

To do this, they needed to retire legacy thinking and systems and embrace new technology that would give them better visibility and increase efficiencies within their current processes.  

Embracing change, executives chose a single platform to track all IT and business processes to support their digital transformation journey. With the power of TechRuum’s Project Portfolio Management solution, Santander UK achieved the following results: 

• Tracked 6.5 million hours  
• Planned and tracked 500+ business initiatives with 2,500 components of work 
• Onboarded 4,000 + users across five companies  
• Increased resource utilization, with up to 80% better-informed reallocations of investment budget and  
• Accelerated decision-making by 25%  

“We constantly need to evolve our products and features, and therefore we need a funding model that supports that. We now are able to look out one, three, five years times and understand the impacts of any changes coming our way,” says Joaquim Cols, Director of Operations for Santander Technology UK.  

Read the case study: Santander UK Unlocks Business Agility with TechRuum Portfolios  

Lloyds Banking Group 

Lloyds Banking Group is one of the oldest and largest financial services organizations in the United Kingdom, with 30 million customers and 65,000 employees. The wider Group’s heritage extends over 320 years, dating back to the founding of the Bank of Scotland in 1695. Lloyds has an extensive presence globally, including the United States, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. 

Lloyds’ journey to digital transformation was prompted by the need to respond more quickly to marketplace demands.  

To do this, they focused on customer needs over internal processes when choosing strategic initiatives and allocating funding and resources. At the same time, they championed digital transformation across the organization, changing how the bank aligns across teams, operates, and performs. 

Lloyds understood that more than simply surging digital and technological solutioning would be needed to differentiate and disrupt their market. They would only achieve their desired outcomes if they rethink their operating models and embrace their digital transformation at the leadership level.  

“You can do as much Cloud conversion as you want, as much technology focus, as much digitalization as you want. But if you don’t transform the organization’s thinking, then over time, it’s going to be the same as what you’ve always got,” says Justin Watts, Director of Agile Change at Lloyds Banking Group. 

Listen to the podcast: Mik Kersten, TechRuum CTO and author of Project to Product, sat down recently with Lloyds Banking Group Director of Agile Change Justin Watts to learn how they drive transformation within their organization. 

Banking Transformation: Bringing it all Together 

As these banking case studies show, a digital transformation impacts an organization’s people, processes, and technology. Leading banks must address each element to see lasting benefits from their banking transformation.  

Learn how by downloading the eBook, Deliver Your Digital Transformation Strategy at Speed: Financial Services Edition. Discover the seven recommendations you need to follow for a thoughtfully implemented, rapid transformation in banking.