The Challenge

Modernizing the digital proposition to improve competitive edge and reach.

Amidst the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Wealth Management firm need to make a transformative shift in their digital offering. Their goal was to introduce a new ‘digital hybrid’ solution that would reinvigorate their online investment offer, make it easier for their customers to invest, and provide an accessible platform that could compete with other leading solutions. The client engaged Credera to navigate the complexity of technical and engineering changes required, scale quickly with deep expertise and fast-track the delivery. As the project progressed, it quickly became clear to achieve the ambitious delivery timelines that some of the existing legacy backend services would need to be reused, requiring some optimisation and refactoring. This added to the complexity of the project as legacy services needed to be integrated with a new cloud-based solution. 

The Solution

Establishing a modern engineering culture.

Together with the client team, we designed the technology transformation that would fast-track the new investment platform’s delivery with the critical features needed to launch it. Credera advised on engineering and solution delivery best practices, helping to devise a comprehensive cloud and DevOps strategy that combined software development and IT operations to maximize throughput. We introduced engineering pods to augment their existing internal capability and enable teams to deliver new platform features incrementally. Using a capacity-based model, we brought in relevant technical expertise and skills at each stage of the project to augment, support, and provide additional delivery leadership as required. We also worked with the client’s architecture team and senior management to reach a consensus on the most suitable cloud provider and decided to build the new platform on Microsoft Azure.

The Results

Launching a scalable, cloud-based investment platform.

Through our partnership, we were able to launch a transformed digital investment platform for self-directed investors. The production-grade solutions we built included market-leading features such as: 

• Access to all existing core business capabilities (fund analysis, share and fund trading, account views, etc.) through a new and intuitive interface.

• Responsive user interface for access via web and mobile devices. 

• Investment goal calculators and analytic tools to help customers simulate and forecast the value of their funds and assets.

• Ability for customers to make an appointment with an investment coach and discuss investment goals in a seamless and integrated experience.

• Ability to release continuously into production at high frequency without manual test phases. 

• Capability release to Alpha and Beta client test groups enabling early feedback and usability concerns before launching to the whole client base.

• Zero downtime of the platform when changes are deployed into production.