When banking goes green, the whole world benefits

One of the UK’s top five banks has been increasingly vocal about the importance of addressing issues associated to climate change. This support has translated into an enterprise-wide ambition to become the leading bank in the UK & RoI helping to address the climate challenge. To achieve this, the bank has built climate into its purpose-led strategy, actively preparing themselves and its customers for change, but also paving the way for customers to take advantage of the opportunities a low carbon future offers.

At the heart of this strategy is the utilisation of data. This data has the power to influence responsible lending & credit decisioning, generate intelligence to make better decisions on climate and adhere to ongoing regulatory reporting.

But for intelligence to be drawn from data collected, the bank had to discover a way to consolidate and organise over 100 data sources – internal and external – that feed directly into their climate agenda. Due to the size, scale and versatility of the bank’s operations, the platform had to be accessible while retaining security and compliance controls.

Whilst they had an existing tech solution in place, the solution was deemed no longer fit for purpose due to scale and agility concerns. With a timeline as ambitious as their business agenda, the bank sought a partner capable of executing a modern data architecture capable of delivering where the current solution could not.

That partner was GlobalLogic.

GlobalLogic adopted the role of technical leadership on the solution design, orchestration and technology development for the bank’s climate data sources and the modernisation of its current data solution. The objective was to gain greater governance over its data, generate intelligence that would benefit all facets of the business and create a cloud-native blueprint that could be leveraged across other business agendas and underpinned by best practices.

This involved designing and implementing a modern data architecture using both the AWS and Snowflake cloud-native data platforms. Over the 12-week project GlobalLogic:

• Generated a high-level solution design for review and governance,
• Designed and built ingestion capabilities using native AWS and Snowflake patterns and bespoke patterns,
• Ran POC for modern orchestration tools,
• Supported the design and review of the data model.

To ensure each part of the project had the discipline of skills required, GlobalLogic dropped in an Agile delivery team. This team remained flexible in its resources, enabling the right expertise to be on hand when requirements needed them to do so. The Pod structure also adopted a series of sprints and progressive planning, giving both sides of the engagement the opportunity to review progress and use real-time insights to adjust details of the roadmap as we neared closer to building out prototypes.

With intelligence built into its new climate data warehouse, the bank can take bigger strides towards its 2025 and
2030 targets, putting in place a more climate conscious lending criteria and data to support ongoing advice that helps change at a business and consumer level. It has also given its customers greater transparency, informed choices, and a bank they are proud to bank with.

GlobalLogic was in a unique position to bring additional value to the bank’s climate change ambitions, at pace. Not only has GlobalLogic worked with this financial institution since 2008 – giving us a rich history of navigating the bank’s ecosystem, tech forums and governance – our partnerships with leading cloud and data vendors meant we had the expertise to deliver one cohesive solution that relied on the integration of two sophisticated data platforms.

Our team’s extensive experience delivering end-to-end transformations also benefited this project. Knowing that the bank’s climate change aspirations would span for years to come, we delivered a sustainable solution that would give them agility, intelligence, and peace of mind during their climate journey. This included adopting infrastructure capable of combining the power of data warehousing, the flexibility of big data platforms and the elasticity of the cloud at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions.

We also supported the bank’s decision to leverage Snowflake – a cloud-based data platform and advocate for net zero and data decarbonisation. GlobalLogic’s expertise with both Snowflake and the AWS toolset enabled the bank to close the knowledge gap they had internally. This influx of engineering capability sped up delivery and in turn, has created a solution that has increased productivity and effectiveness of data-related efforts. As well as gaining access to structured data and insights, there are three notable ongoing benefits:

1. A modernised climate warehouse and data model to inform lending decisions in accordance with responsible lending – edging the bank ever close to their climate agenda goals.
2. Putting the bank in the best possible position when it comes to its market and regulatory reporting on climate related activities – including mandatory TCFD-aligned climate reporting.
3. Establishing a fresh perspective and measuring architecture for decision-making, enabled by a Total Climate Impact Measurement framework. This framework is a comprehensive look at what businesses need to know about risk, opportunities, and maintaining a positive social impact.