Understand how a large bank runs its technology estate and sources its providers
For strategy, sales and corporate-development teams that need an insider’s view of a large bank’s technology priorities, architecture and sourcing model.
- Engagement type
- Team Pod
- Experts
- 4 consulted · 1 lead
- Hours
- ~50
- Duration
- 4 weeks
What the client needed
A firm needed to understand the business and technology landscape at a typical large UK bank: digital, data and AI priorities over the next few years, the core technology stack and architecture approach — core banking, digital channels, cloud, data platforms, mainframe and hybrid-cloud integration — how the IT-services and technology-partner landscape is organised, how sourcing and vendor management work, and which challenges will shape the next round of decisions.
The brief
The questions on the table
As the client wrote them, lightly shortened. Client and respondents are not named.
- Q1
What do a large bank’s digital, data and AI priorities look like over the next three years?
- Q2
How is the core stack built and evolving — core banking, channels, cloud, data, mainframe?
- Q3
How are IT-services providers and technology partners organised, and how is sourcing managed?
- Q4
Which challenges will decide the next technology and sourcing choices?
The hours
What the work involved
- 01
Landscape
Business and technology priorities at a large bank, written from the inside: what is funded, what is deferred and why, from the lead’s years running infrastructure for a UK bank’s payments business.
- 02
Architecture
Core banking, channels, cloud, data platforms and the mainframe-to-hybrid-cloud integration pattern, with where each is on its roadmap.
- 03
Sourcing model
How the provider landscape is tiered, how work is allocated, how vendor management and governance run, and what a new provider must do to get in.
- 04
Cross-check
Three further bank technology leaders — a custodian bank, a payments platform and a GIC head — reviewed the picture for consistency across institutions.
- 05
Working session
With the client’s banking sector leads.
Deliverables
What the client received
- Landscape notePriorities and funding logic.
- Architecture mapStack, roadmap, integration pattern.
- Sourcing modelTiers, allocation, governance.
- Decision driversThe challenges that will decide the next cycle.
- One working sessionWith notes.
The terms
What an engagement like this costs
You buy hours in blocks and can change the expert at the end of any block, at no extra cost. Longer projects run in stages: pause after a block, pick up the next stage when you are ready.
- Rate band
- $65–$250 /hr
- Senior specialists can be up to $500
- Hour blocks
- 1 · 2 · 5 · 10 · 20 · 50 · custom
- This engagement
- Team Pod · ~50 hours · 4 weeks
More in IT services
Need the inside view of a bank’s estate?
Describe what you needFor example: “We are building a go-to-market for UK banks and need to understand how they buy technology services and from whom.”
We aim to come back with matched experts within 24 to 72 hours.