Integrating an Acquired Lending Platform into Core Banking at Speed
How Allica Bank partnered with Build Circle to migrate 2,000 commercial loans with zero downtime, launch a brand new current account in under a year, and boost release cadence by 800%.
"Build Circle brought the engineering rigour and DevOps discipline required to accelerate our release cycles and get a full-service current account live in under twelve months."
Ravneet Shah, CTO, Allica Bank
Increase in release cadence through embedded DevOps automation
Commercial loans migrated with complete data integrity
To market for full-service business current account features
Downtime sustained across critical peak trading periods
The Challenge
High-stakes acquisition integration versus core product delivery
Allica Bank needed to integrate a recently acquired commercial lending platform directly into its core banking system, whilst simultaneously accelerating the delivery of new current account features.
The initiative presented significant operational and technical risks:
- Complex data integration: Migrating thousands of active, highly regulated loan records from an external system without disrupting daily operations or compromising data integrity.
- Aggressive speed to market: Bringing a brand-new, full-service current account proposition live in under twelve months to maintain commercial momentum.
- Modernising delivery practices: Shifting internal development toward modern DevOps practices to enable rapid, continuous product releases, a rhythm the legacy delivery processes were not equipped to sustain.
The Solution
Modernising pipelines and executing zero-downtime migration
Build Circle partnered with Allica Bank to execute the migration iteratively and establish high-velocity delivery standards across the core platform:
1. Zero-disruption loan platform integration
- Data integrity architecture: Designed and executed the migration of 2,000 commercial loans from the acquired platform directly into Allica’s core banking systems.
- Audit-proof continuity: Maintained 100% data integrity and regulatory compliance throughout the transition, ensuring zero service disruption for borrowers or internal teams.
2. Rapid current account delivery
- Parallel core development: Structured delivery streams to develop and launch full-service business current account capabilities in parallel with the data migration.
- Rapid market entry: Delivered the end-to-end current account functionality into production in under one year.
3. DevOps transformation & platform scalability
- Automated CI/CD workflows: Replaced manual release gates with automated deployment pipelines, increasing deployment frequency and platform resilience.
- Capacity for growth: Upgraded platform capacity and automation workflows, enabling Allica to process a significantly higher volume of loans each month without additional operational strain.
Business Outcomes
Scalable architecture and an eightfold release acceleration
- 800% boost in release cadence: DevOps automation enabled engineering teams to deploy updates eight times faster and with greater frequency.
- 2,000 live loans integrated: Successfully consolidated the acquired portfolio, unlocking operational economies of scale and streamlining the management estate.
- Flawless peak availability: Sustained zero unplanned downtime during high-volume peak trading windows throughout the migration.
- Expanded monthly lending capacity: Platform automation directly increased the volume of loan originations and processing throughput the bank can handle each month.
- Accelerated product roadmap: Delivering the current account in under 12 months provided Allica with an immediate competitive edge in the SME banking space.
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