If your infrastructure isn’t built to scale, neither is your banking business

Stable, automated platforms drive rapid growth. One of the world’s most ambitious emerging markets bank has just proven it, transforming its back-end infrastructure through a high-impact outsourcing deal that is as much about innovation and scalability as it is about cost efficiency.

This bank isn’t dabbling in transformation. It has a clear growth agenda, using its partner ecosystem to modernize operations, boost efficiency, and accelerate its global ambitions. With market share dominance at home and aggressive expansion plans abroad, the bank is building the operational muscle it needs to compete on the world stage.

This bank is betting big on tech and ecosystem partners to power global growth

This full-service bank dominates its local market and has undergone major structural changes and acquisitions in recent years. It partners with leading global IT services firms to digitize, modernize, and run its front-to-back operations; a rare, highly outsourced model that is constantly refined to maximize value across both cost and growth.

Strategic outsourcing is central to its playbook. Most IT operations are delivered through external partners, complemented by in-house capabilities, using a mix of managed services, professional services, and time-and-materials models. This approach delivers measurable results while embedding best practices across the organization.

The results speak for themselves: a cost-to-income ratio well below the 60% average in developed markets. The bank’s success proves that strategic outsourcing, coupled with a strong ecosystem, is a powerful lever for both efficiency and growth.

Beating tech debt with modernization and IT-business alignment

After major organizational changes, the bank had stronger capabilities but also mounting tech debt. Instead of patching the problem, it created detailed technology blueprints for every business domain, identifying exactly what was needed and consolidating it into a forward-looking roadmap. This became the foundation for aligning IT priorities directly with business outcomes.

The result was a new operating model where IT and the business share KPIs, work through value streams, and have complete transparency on the total cost of ownership. Each business unit now knows precisely what it costs to run operations, driving joint accountability and efficiency.

This analysis also revealed an opportunity: move infrastructure operations into a managed services model to complement existing outsourcing. But, with low automation maturity and heavily manual processes, the bank needed a partner that could accelerate back-end modernization. The goal was not just cost savings. It was to build a scalable, automated platform that could power the bank’s growth for years to come.

Tech edge, strong partnerships, proprietary accelerators, and risk sharing sealed the deal

The bank ran a competitive RFP to optimize and modernize its IT infrastructure services, targeting significant performance improvements in its core architecture and IT service desk. One of the world’s largest service providers won for three key reasons:

• A clear technology edge backed by a deep infrastructure partnership ecosystem
• The most compelling automation and cloud toolkit, including a proprietary platform and industry-specific accelerators
• Commitment to future outcomes with skin-in-the-game commercials and clear milestone commitments

The provider’s global footprint, deep financial services expertise, broad technology experience, and willingness to share risk strengthened the offer. While reducing operating expenses is a clear benefit, the real value comes from reinvesting part of those savings into critical infrastructure upgrades. These will cut audit non-compliance, reduce outages, speed up provisioning, automate manual work, improve first-call resolution, and ultimately lift customer satisfaction.

The deal is now live, the transition is underway, and the multi-year partnership is set to become a foundation for the bank’s growth.

The Bottom Line: Strategic outsourcing is not about trimming costs. It’s about building the digital backbone that makes transformation possible.

This bank’s skin-in-the-game partnership delivers critical tech modernization, solves many manual processes, and lays a strong foundation for scale and growth. Without a reliable, automated back end, even the boldest growth ambitions will stall. Get the infrastructure right, and you create the platform to compete and win in any market.