Page 80 - Bank Case Studies

However, banks were having to face changes necessary to

achieve the efficiency and effectiveness of the role, structure

and processes of critical functions such as IT, risk and

compliance. For instance, more banks are moving to open

architecture, which means they no longer have complete

end-to-end control internally of their IT systems or data.

In addition, the proliferation of ‘fintechs’ and the

encroachment of large tech firms into the banking sector,

has heralded that digital technologies are providing
customers with alternative offerings, often at a lower cost

than the banks can provide.

Banks that accelerate their replacement of legacy IT stand to

gain a competitive edge that will be hard to erode. Staley

commented that:

“In many ways, Barclays is a technology company with a

balance sheet and regulators. Roughly 30% of the GDP

of the United Kingdom goes through our payments

system every day. So having the right technology in

place is a critical obligation that Barclays has towards

the United Kingdom. Our back office system has to

function if the nation’s economy is to function.” (12)

Ashok Vaswani, CEO of Barclays U.K. stated in 2017 that:

“we’ve been on this digital transformation for the last

three or four years and the way we are thinking about
it is that digital is going to change everything. Frankly,