Customer: Various FS clients
Category: Banking
Geography: UK
Timescale: 12 months
Project Budget: £12M
Status: Completed
Tags: banking, finance, regulatory
Case Description
Gibbs Hybrid has supported a number of clients with their PSD2 open data strategy and implementation programmes. One such example is our work with a leading UK bank, responding to a government call for open data.
What We Did
Taking a lead Programme Leadership role, Gibbs Hybrid was responsible for:
• Understanding the legal implications, corporate and social responsibility of open data once APIs are exposed for general consumption.
• Building the business case to secure internal acceptance and project funding.
• Defining the architecture and approach to integrating with legacy systems and defining the road-map for future adoption.
• Identifying the practice, policy and procedure for identifying API use cases and build standards
• Cradle to grave proof of concept for over 150 API builds across all lines of business (Wealth, Retail, Corporate, Digital and Consumer Lending).
• Selecting the chosen product and API platform for internal and external use – and subsequent commercial negotiation (MuleSoft and Akana).
• Evangelising the need for API uptake internally and externally through events, demos and public Hackathons with partner start-up enterprises.
How We Did It
Our client didn’t just want a straight resourcing option, and so, in this case, the service was provided under a fixed deliverable, Statement of Work, arrangement.
The first challenge was to qualify and onboard 64 people who could support the programme as required. We took the accountability for the quality of the service and removed the headache of identifying, interviewing and selecting candidates from our client. This was done through our own skills database, technical competency, open day events and individual interviews.
The initial £12m, 1-year project had almost 120 project team members working across the various lines of business. As part of the leadership team, our regular interactions with key C-suite stakeholders helped to ensure a successful response and project buy-in. We successfully navigated a number of challenges – whilst most of these were technical in nature (standardisation of build classes, integration with legacy systems and exposing technology performance issues), some were also operational, with possible reputational risk to the Bank. For instance, how to manage the impact of performance issues on customers, how to detect API security threats and how to ensure the safety of customer data when APIs were consumed by an independent 3rd party were all successfully navigated.
The Outcome
We are pleased to report that the programme was a success, resulting in the institution setting up a new line of business, “Open Banking”. Stakeholders across all lines of business now actively use the platforms to drive innovation within the organisation.