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Summary – DACH banks suffer from siloed IT systems and legacy processes that hamper innovation against agile neobanks. To turn your banking service into a technology platform, combine an API-first approach and fintech ecosystem, hybrid cloud modular infrastructure, agile culture with collaborative methodologies, then leverage AI and automation to personalize offerings and speed up operations.
Solution: conduct an IT audit to define a roadmap prioritizing openness, modularity, agility, and AI, and target quick wins before enterprise-wide modernization.
The digital transformation is upending traditional banks today, particularly in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), which are confronted with the rise of agile neobanks and automated investment platforms. Fragmented IT systems and legacy processes too often hamper their ability to innovate and provide a seamless customer experience.
Yet, Swiss institutions are demonstrating that a platform-oriented IT strategy, together with an agile culture, AI and automation, can transform a banking service into a true technology enterprise. Rather than viewing IT as a mere cost center, banks should elevate it into a lever for growth and innovation. This article presents four key pillars to succeed in this transition and thrive in the software era.
Adopt an open and interconnected platform
An open banking platform makes it easier to integrate partners and launch new services. It places interoperability and innovation at the heart of your IT ecosystem.
API Management and Open Banking
APIs play a central role in opening up financial services. By exposing standardized interfaces, a bank can bring together fintechs, insurers, and payment providers to enrich its customer offering. This interconnectivity creates a network of value-added services without burdening the core of your legacy system.
Implementing a robust, secure, and governed API layer ensures controlled access to data and transactions. It meets regulatory requirements while fostering the agility needed for rapid partnerships. The API-first approach reinforces this strategy by placing interfaces at the core of design.
A mid-sized Swiss bank deployed an API catalog for its payment and credit services. This example shows that centralized governance, combined with a monitoring platform, reduced the time to implement third-party integrations by 40%, while ensuring traceability and compliance.
Fintech Partner Ecosystem
Beyond APIs, building a fintech partner ecosystem enables you to offer differentiated services without developing every component in-house. The marketplace model, or “third-party banking,” increases offering flexibility and lowers entry costs.
This strategy requires a modular platform capable of dynamically composing services from different providers. It implies an IT architecture designed to load, configure, and run external microservices securely.
A Swiss cantonal bank has been working for two years with several fintech startups on a loans and insurance marketplace. The example demonstrates that a common data repository and a sandbox platform accelerate innovation cycles, tripling the rate of new services in production.
Modular Infrastructure and Hybrid Cloud
Designing your infrastructure as independent modules—microservices, containers, and serverless functions—allows you to scale each component according to actual load. This optimizes costs and performance while ensuring increased resilience.
Using a hybrid cloud, combining local data centers and hyperscaler providers, offers the necessary flexibility without sacrificing data sovereignty. A phased rollout, orchestrated via CI/CD pipelines, ensures continuous quality control.
A Swiss financial institution segmented its core banking foundation into decoupled microservices. This example shows that, thanks to this modularity, it was able to migrate 60% of its workloads to a public cloud while keeping latency under 100 ms for 95% of transactions.
Foster an Agile and Collaborative Culture
An agile culture brings IT and business units closer together, reduces time-to-market, and increases internal satisfaction. Team autonomy sparks creativity and responsiveness.
Cross-Functional Agile Methods
Adopting agile frameworks—Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe—brings together cross-functional teams around short sprints and clear objectives. This approach shortens development cycles and encourages early business feedback.
Within IT departments, establishing autonomous squads facilitates ownership of business challenges. Each team is responsible for the full service lifecycle, from design to operation, which improves quality and empowers each contributor.
A Swiss private bank formed three squads dedicated to digitizing customer portals. The example shows that in less than six months, the delivery time for a new feature dropped from eight weeks to two, while maintaining 100% regulatory compliance.
Co-Creation and Design Thinking
Involving end users and business stakeholders from the start optimizes the relevance of developed features. Design thinking workshops foster creativity and align IT with operational priorities.
Defining customer journeys, building prototypes, and iterative testing phases ensure the final product aligns with real needs. This approach reduces rework and non-value-added development.
In a mobile payment solutions project, a Swiss bank held ten collaborative workshops with advisors and pilot customers. The example demonstrates that user feedback during the prototype phase reduced post-launch adjustments by 30%.
Empowering Teams and Continuous Learning
Skill development is crucial to support digital transformation. Promoting continuous learning—internal training, hackathons, certifications—boosts employee engagement and ensures the adoption of new practices.
Establishing internal communities of practice allows experts to share experiences and best practices, particularly on architecture, security, and UX. These regular exchanges strengthen cohesion and spread the agile culture throughout the organization.
A Swiss financial institution launched an internal certification program for DevOps and Cloud. The example shows that 80% of participants then applied these skills to real projects, helping reduce production incidents by 45%.
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Leverage AI and Advanced Analytics
AI and advanced analytics enable predictive and contextual financial services. Personalization enhances customer satisfaction and value creation.
Real-Time Customer Profiling
By analyzing navigation, transaction, and interaction data in real time, it becomes possible to instantly tailor offerings to each profile. Contextual recommendations—products, services, or alerts—increase engagement rates.
Implementing a centralized data lake and stream processing pipelines ensures a unified customer view. Real-time scoring algorithms feed your CRM and digital channels, ensuring a coherent omnichannel experience.
A Swiss wealth management firm implemented a streaming profiling engine for its online clients. This example shows that the open rate for service suggestions jumped by 25%, while churn decreased by 15% over six months.
Predictive Scoring and Risk Prevention
Machine learning models applied to credit history and transactional behavior improve the accuracy of lending decisions. Predictive scoring anticipates default risks and optimizes client portfolio management.
The integration of external data—social media, economic indicators, payment data—increases model granularity. Robust governance ensures transparency and compliance with GDPR and MiFID standards.
A Swiss cantonal bank deployed a predictive scoring tool for its SME loans. The example demonstrates a 20% reduction in credit losses and a 30% increase in approved applications while maintaining controlled risk.
Automate Customer Journeys and Human Interaction
Targeted automation reduces repetitive tasks and speeds up business processes. It frees up time for high-value interactions.
Request Processing Automation
Automating KYC processes, credit applications, or complex transfers involves orchestrated workflows and rule engines. Task standardization reduces errors and accelerates the validation cycle.
Combining OCR, RPA, and secure APIs ensures automated processing of documents and account statements while maintaining traceability and auditability at every step.
A Swiss bank implemented an automated process for credit card applications. This example shows that response time dropped from five business days to two hours, with customer satisfaction increasing by 35%.
Robotic Process Automation for Back Office
Deploying software robots for repetitive tasks—transaction reconciliation, regulatory report generation, data updates—increases reliability and reduces operational costs.
Centralized robot orchestration, coupled with continuous monitoring, allows for quick script adjustments and ensures minimal maintenance.
A Swiss wealth management firm automated its monthly portfolio consolidation. This example proves that it cut human time spent on this task by four and generated annual savings of 200,000 CHF.
Omnichannel Orchestration
Orchestrating interactions between chatbots, advisors, and self-service portals ensures the right channel is offered at the right time. Hybrid scenarios, combining automation and escalation to humans, are essential to maintain relationship quality.
A centralized messaging platform connects all digital touchpoints. Automated scripts pre-qualify requests and route complex cases to experts, ensuring seamless follow-up.
A regional Swiss bank implemented this omnichannel orchestration. This example demonstrates that the volume of conversations handled without human intervention reached 60%, while increasing the Net Promoter Score by 12 points over one year.
Turn IT into a Growth Lever
Adopting an open platform, instilling an agile culture, leveraging AI, and automating judiciously are the four pillars of a successful IT transformation in the financial sector. These levers, demonstrated by concrete Swiss cases, show that it is possible to reconcile innovation, operational performance, and service quality.
Institutions that invest in these strategic pillars won’t just survive disruption—they will redefine banking experience standards. Our Edana experts are at your disposal to analyze your specific challenges and guide you into this new technological era.
