Background and Business Context

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This major worldwide financial institution, with well over 100,000 employees, operates in a highly regulated environment with complex, interconnected systems spanning retail banking, corporate finance, trading, and asset management. The organization faces constant pressure from regulators, market volatility, and rapidly evolving customer expectations. Operational resilience is not optional. It is a regulatory and reputational imperative.

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Despite its strong market position, the bank’s core operational processes were hindered by siloed systems, fragmented delivery practices, and long cycle times. These inefficiencies were exacerbated by growing compliance demands and the need to accelerate time-to-market for new financial products and services. The enterprise recognized the urgent need to modernize its architectural foundations, streamline value delivery, and enhance predictability while maintaining strict adherence to regulatory requirements.

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Mandate

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The enterprise architecture team of this financial institution, partly located in Europe, was tasked with driving a large-scale transformation program to:

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1. Modernize core processes by aligning them with current best practices in systems delivery.

2. Embed operational resilience into technology and process design.

3. Implement a unified delivery framework capable of scaling across multiple business lines and technology platforms.

4. Ensure compliance with stringent financial regulations during and after transformation.

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Approach and Methodology

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1. Capability-Driven Architecture

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The initiative began with the development of a comprehensive capability model for the bank. This capability map served as a strategic blueprint to:

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• Identify redundancies in systems and processes.

• Highlight critical capabilities that directly supported resilience objectives.

• Create a shared taxonomy for business and technology stakeholders.

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By decomposing the organization’s strategic objectives into well-defined capabilities, the enterprise architects were able to prioritize transformation efforts in the areas with the highest operational and regulatory impact.

 

2. Value Stream Mapping

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Next, the enterprise architecture team conducted value stream mapping workshops with cross-functional teams across retail, commercial, and investment banking divisions. The goal was to visualize end-to-end delivery flows, identify waste, and pinpoint where hand-offs and delays occurred. Key insights from the mapping exercise included:

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• Excessive cross-team dependencies in approval workflows.

• Redundant manual checks that could be automated while remaining compliant.

• Non-standardized release management practices across platforms.

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These findings shaped a targeted roadmap to reduce delays and enhance the flow of value to customers.

 

3. Embedding SAFe® Delivery Practices

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To unify delivery and improve predictability, the financial institution implemented Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) practices across multiple platforms involving the enterprise architecture team. This included:

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• Establishing Agile Release Trains (ARTs) aligned to major value streams, designed by enterprise architects, among others.

• Defining Program Increments (PIs) with clear objectives, dependencies, and regulatory checkpoints.

• Training over 500 staff, spanning business analysts, developers, compliance officers, and release managers, on SAFe® principles.

• Creating a governance model to balance agility with the rigorous controls demanded by the financial sector, with the assistance of the enterprise architecture team.

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By institutionalizing SAFe®, the bank not only accelerated delivery but also improved alignment between business goals and technical execution.

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4. Regulatory Alignment

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Given the financial sector’s compliance obligations, every architectural and process change was vetted through regulatory impact assessments. The enterprise architecture team and the SAFe® delivery team worked closely with internal compliance teams and external auditors to:

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• Ensure new workflows adhere to Dodd-Frank, Basel III, and local jurisdiction regulations.

• Maintain audit trails for all significant system and process changes.

• Integrate real-time risk monitoring into the architecture to detect and address compliance deviations early.

 

Execution and Delivery

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The transformation was delivered in phased increments over 18 months. Each phase targeted a defined set of capabilities and value streams, ensuring business continuity while changes were rolled out.

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Technology Enablers

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• Consolidation of overlapping systems into a common integration platform.

• Deployment of automation tools for testing, deployment, and compliance reporting.

• Introduction of monitoring dashboards to track delivery performance, release readiness, and operational resilience metrics in real time.

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Change Management

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Recognizing that cultural alignment was critical, the bank:

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• Established a Center of Excellence (CoE) for enterprise architecture and agile delivery.

• Maintained continuous stakeholder engagement through executive briefings, town halls, and feedback loops.

• Celebrated early wins to build momentum and support for the transformation.

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Results and Business Impact

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The initiative delivered tangible, measurable outcomes, as shown in Figure 1 below:​​​