Building a Cloud-First Data Infrastructure

Our client was a challenger bank designed to disrupt the SME lending market by significantly reducing loan approval times from the industry standard of three months to just two weeks.

Their vision was to combine a cloud-first approach with regional lending ‘Pods’, high-street locations where experienced bankers provided personalised financial services.

To achieve this, our client required a scalable, integrated, and highly secure data and technology ecosystem that supported both regulatory compliance and operational efficiency.

Our client needed a technology partner to design and implement an end-to-end banking infrastructure that enabled seamless integration between financial platforms, streamlined loan approval processes, and ensured compliance with stringent banking regulations.

Key requirements included:

Cloud-based infrastructure: A scalable, cost-effective architecture to support rapid business growth.

Third-party system integration: Connecting key financial platforms such as Mambu, Xero, nCino, ClearBank, TruNarrative, and NSSL.

Data strategy and reporting: Developing a centralised data lake and structured data marts to power regulatory and operational insights.

Automated reporting: Ensuring real-time business intelligence through Power BI dashboards.

Operational agility: Embedding an agile approach to rapidly iterate and refine banking operations.

Answer Digital partnered with this challenger bank from the early stages, helping define their technology roadmap, establish a cloud-first banking infrastructure, and embed data-driven decision-making processes. Our work focused on integrating critical banking platforms, implementing a modern data architecture, and ensuring compliance with financial regulations.

Key Actions:

Data architecture and integration

• Designed a cloud-based data lake in Snowflake to serve as the central repository for raw and structured data.
• Integrated Mambu (core banking), nCino (CRM), ClearBank (clearing bank), TruNarrative (customer ID verification), and Xero (accounting).
• Leveraged Mambu Process Orchestrator (MPO) to automate key banking workflows.

Regulatory compliance & reporting

• Developed structured data marts to provide clean, reliable data for regulatory and financial reporting.
• Automated regulatory compliance reporting using Power BI, ensuring access to up-to-date insights.
• Established role-based access controls to maintain data security and compliance.

Operational efficiency and Agile delivery

• Led capability modelling and defined the operational delivery roadmap for the banks' services.
• Supported Kanban-based agile delivery, enabling rapid iterations and improvements.
• Documented operational processes and trained teams to maintain long-term sustainability.
  

Solution Highlights

Cloud-first architecture
AWS-backed Snowflake enabled a scalable, secure, and cost-effective data infrastructure.

Seamless third-party integration

Integrated core banking, accounting, and compliance systems, including NSSL – an online savings account provider, supporting the bank’s financial ecosystem

Power BI dashboards delivered instant visibility into financial and operational metrics, enabling intuitive, self-service reporting for teams.

Agile banking model

Enabled the bank to operate efficiently and scale quickly with minimal overhead.

Decentralised lending approach

The ‘Pod’ model allowed for localised decision-making while ensuring regulatory oversight.

This foundational work provides a strong blueprint for future challenger banks looking to modernise their data infrastructure.

The approach to data integration, cloud-based scalability, and regulatory reporting automation offers valuable insights for financial institutions seeking to modernise their operations and improve customer experience.

Key impacts:

Faster loan processing: Targeted loan approval time reduced from three months to two weeks

Regulatory compliance: Automated reporting ensured adherence to FCA and PRA regulations.

Scalability: Cloud-first infrastructure enabled the bank to expand without heavy infrastructure investment.

Improved financial transparency: Mambu and Xero integration streamlined financial reconciliation and transaction tracking.

Operational agility: Kanban delivery allowed for continuous improvements and rapid problem resolution.