From Legacy to Lakehouse: Transforming Enterprise Data Strategy for a Tier 1 Investment Bank
How a leading investment bank partnered with Build Circle to replace legacy batch processing with a real-time data mesh architecture, unlocking millions in projected revenue and delivering personalised generative AI insights in just over three months.
"To lead in a rapidly shifting financial landscape, we had to move past rigid legacy infrastructure. Build Circle gave us the modern architecture and engineering discipline required to turn fragmented data into trusted, real-time products that drive customer experience and measurable revenue growth."
Technology Leadership, Tier 1 Investment Bank
New projected revenue unlocked through rapid digital product creation
Currency exchange tracking deployed across all banking channels
From concept to delivery across new cloud data infrastructure
Metadata & governance restoring enterprise trust in data assets
The Challenge
Rigid legacy batch pipelines vs. real-time market agility
To maintain its competitive edge, the investment bank needed to rapidly deploy modern digital products and respond instantly to evolving customer requirements. However, operational agility was constrained by decades of fragmented legacy architecture:
- Rigid legacy infrastructure: Systems were built on outdated technologies that were slow to change, creating an acute bottleneck for engineering teams trying to launch new customer services.
- Latent batch processing: The bank relied heavily on traditional overnight batch processing, preventing trading desks, operational teams, and executive leaders from viewing transactions, customer behavior, and market performance in real time.
- Fragmented and siloed data: Vital business information was locked within disjointed departmental silos, each with competing architectures and no shared governance. This lack of a unified data view led to operational inefficiencies and missed market opportunities.
- Deficits in data literacy and trust: Suboptimal enterprise-wide data governance led to widespread skepticism regarding data accuracy, inhibiting confident, data-driven decision-making across key business domains.
The institution needed a comprehensive, modern data strategy that could unify its fragmented estate, introduce rigorous governance, and unlock high-velocity digital product innovation.
The Solution
Decentralised data mesh principles and real-time cloud capabilities
Build Circle partnered with the bank’s technology organisation to architect and deploy a modern cloud data lakehouse, built upon scalable data mesh principles:
1. Shift from batch to real-time streaming
- High-throughput data ingestion: Replaced inflexible overnight batch jobs with real-time processing pipelines, allowing live customer, transaction, and market events to flow continuously across the bank.
- Multi-channel FX tracking: Built real-time currency exchange capabilities that track FX rates across multiple client channels simultaneously, elevating customer experience and pricing accuracy.
2. Domain-driven data democratisation
- Data-as-a-product architecture: Shifted ownership of data to individual business domains using data mesh principles, giving teams direct access to live performance reporting and domain-specific KPIs.
- Retail performance data engine: Launched a dedicated real-time retail performance data product, providing executive stakeholders with immediate visibility into commercial metrics and customer trends.
3. Gold-standard governance and metadata management
- Metadata management: Deployed a centralised metadata management framework that catalogues data assets, tracks lineage, and establishes transparent data hygiene.
- Rebuilding data trust: Instituted strict automated governance protocols, raising data literacy across business units and ensuring stakeholders can rely on data integrity for critical strategic decisions.
4. Personalised generative AI insights
- Contextual role-based dashboards: Developed an innovative Generative AI proof of concept that personalises reporting views, translating raw data into targeted insights and contextual summaries tailored to individual executive roles.
5. Engineering upskilling and operational independence
- Capability transfer: Partnered directly with the bank’s internal engineering squads to upskill developers across cloud platforms, data mesh design, CI/CD pipeline automation, and automated test frameworks.
- Sustainable self-sufficiency: Ensured internal teams gained the practical operational capability to independently manage, test, and scale the data platform following delivery.
Business Outcomes
Measurable commercial growth, operational efficiency, and lasting autonomy
Delivered within an accelerated timeframe of just over three months, the transformation positioned the investment bank to lead in the digital era:
- Millions in new projected revenue: Provided the scalable architectural foundation required to bring innovative digital products to market rapidly, capturing new commercial revenue streams.
- Differentiated customer experience: Real-time multi-channel FX tracking delivered superior visibility and execution speed, creating a competitive edge across transaction banking.
- Improved customer retention: Empowered relationship managers and product teams with reliable, live customer insights, enabling targeted service strategies that drive customer loyalty.
- Real-time decisions: Eliminated data silos, allowing distributed teams across business domains to base operational and trading decisions on trusted, live metrics.
- Targeted GenAI Personalisation: Proved the capability of generative AI to eliminate dashboard fatigue, serving tailored insights directly to decision makers.
Looking to transition from legacy data silos to a scalable, real-time data mesh?
Discover how Build Circle helps leading financial institutions and enterprise organizations modernise data architectures, implement gold-standard governance, and accelerate product innovation.
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