A UK clearing bank whose clients build their products on its payment infrastructure has to keep building too, across payments, financial crime and the platforms behind its growth.
Our engineers work inside its teams, and the bank is bringing us into more of its work.
AT A GLANCE
- Industry: Banking: UK clearing, payments and embedded banking
- Challenge: Find a partner with the expertise, positioning and flexibility to grow engineering as fast as the business, across payments, financial crime and new products
- Wizeline offering: A mixed team of engineers and technical specialists working in pods alongside the bank's own, with senior leads who take part in some of its architecture decisions
- Highlights: Invited into a widening range of the bank's engineering areas, including new ones that call for new skills. The bank's only external engineering partner, two years after taking over from a previous partner in three to four months. Specialist roles filled in about 20 days, against an SLA of more than 70.
A CLEARING BANK THAT OTHER FIRMS BUILD ON CAN'T STAND STILL
Our client is a fast-growing UK clearing bank. That’s a different business from the bank on the high street. The bank describes itself as a tech-bank built around banking and payment infrastructure, and fintechs, banks, building societies and other financial institutions use it to hold accounts, clear payments in real time and build banking into their own products.
When other firms run their products on a bank’s infrastructure, the bank has to keep building. Every new payment capability and every new control against fraud has to be built and run. Right now, financial crime is one area where the bank is putting a great deal of its effort.
All of that takes engineering, and a lot of it. The bank needed a partner with the expertise, positioning and flexibility to help it grow as fast as its ambitions.
TWO YEARS IN, WIZELINE ENGINEERS WORK INSIDE THE BANK'S OWN TEAMS
About two years ago, we took over from a previous partner the bank had been working with. The handover took three to four months, and along the way the bank put us through a trial, which we passed by bringing in the right engineers quickly.
Today a mixed team of about 80 Wizeline engineers and technical specialists works in pods across cross-border payments, invoicing, financial crime and the bank’s business platforms. Most pods are almost entirely our engineers, working alongside some of the bank’s own.
The bank’s product teams write the definitions, and we do the development and the engineering. Our senior leads sometimes take part in architecture and top-level decisions before the work moves into engineering. That mix of shaping decisions and building is what we mean by consultative doers.
At a recent quarterly business review, those leads presented their work to the bank’s leadership themselves.
We’re now the bank’s only external engineering partner.
FIVE REASONS THE BANK HAS BROUGHT WIZELINE CLOSER
Each one shows up in how the two teams work day to day:
- Cultural fit. The bank held an internal event for about 150 of its own engineers, a place for them to talk among themselves with no one external in the room. We were invited, and two of our engineers gave a talk. One of the bank’s engineering leaders came wearing a Wizeline shirt. Laura Esteve, Wizeline’s account lead, read it this way: “He was the only one, and he was a boss, so it’s a statement.”
- Communication at three levels. The bank’s CTO works with our Chief AI Officer, its VP of engineering with our account lead, and its engineering managers with our senior leads. Steering meetings run every month, and we’re part of the bank’s own Microsoft Teams, where the chat is open at any hour.
- Reading what the bank needs. Over the past year, we’ve heard the bank ask how fast we can do something more times than we can count. So we aim our sense of urgency at what the bank needs, not only at its problems. When the bank recently asked us to take over a piece of work at short notice, we met on a Tuesday and came back a few business days later with a proposal.
- Transparency. A mistake in one of our internal processes once flagged some of our engineers for poor performance. Those engineers work so closely with the bank’s teams that they took it to the bank’s own engineering managers, assuming it had come from there. The bank’s VP of engineering came straight to us, said there had always been transparency between us, and asked what had happened, since the bank didn’t think these engineers deserved to be flagged. Transparency is a word the bank itself uses about us.
- Speed on new skills. When the bank needs a skill it doesn’t have, we go and find it: specialist roles filled in about 20 days, against an SLA of more than 70. That speed opened the door to a new project.
BEYOND ITS FIRST BRIEF: HOW A CLEARING BANK IS BRINGING WIZELINE INTO NEW AREAS
At the time of writing, the bank is inviting us into new areas, some of which call for skills it didn’t first hire us for. We think that’s what an engineering partnership in banking should look like: a bank brings new projects to a partner already inside its teams and trusts it to find the skills they call for, instead of starting again with someone new.
With each new request, we respond quickly, align to what the bank needs and come back with a working plan with the right team built in. That lets the bank move faster for the firms that build on it, and it opens doors for us too.
Growing engineering as fast as your business? Let’s talk.
Wizeline is a nearshore transformation engineering partner with 1,400+ team members across Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Spain, Romania and Vietnam. Our consultative doers embed within client teams to move AI possibilities into modern products and workflow innovation. See Wizeline’s engineering and AI capabilities.
