A lean, future-proof infrastructure
Successful Cards-as-a-Service (CaaS) solutions must be fully adaptable and scalable to suit clients of all sizes and needs, from small business-to-business partners to large financial institutions. In its goal to remain the European market leader in CaaS, Advanzia Bank’s innovative cloud approach aims to transform its traditional IT infrastructure into fully modular, scalable and agile credit card solutions for financial institutions and business partners.
Successful Cards-as-a-Service (CaaS) solutions must be fully adaptable and scalable to suit clients of all sizes and needs
By embracing cutting-edge cloud services and building a robust partnership ecosystem, the digital-only bank will be able to quickly respond to the evolving needs of clients and cardholders. This move to the cloud is fuelling continued growth across business lines, boosting competitiveness and laying the groundwork for Advanzia’s future success.
A bespoke solution
While some partner banks are keen to outsource their entire credit card programme, others prefer to keep some services in-house. To fit every client’s unique requirements and set-up, CaaS programmes must be fully modular from end-to-end, from customer enrolment to credit collection. They must also be flexible and agile so that any changes on the client side can be quickly implemented on the cardholder side.
The scalability of cloud services made them an obvious solution for Advanzia to quickly and efficiently shape its IT infrastructure into a leaner and more agile architecture. Fully modular cloud systems will offer clients a range of integration levels and options while ensuring a seamless and secure customer journey.
Every client and cardholder touchpoint can be tailored to a range of markets, customer bases, jurisdictions and strategies. Clients can choose to embed Advanzia’s CaaS systems into their own onboarding processes, customer service platforms, web banking portals or know-your-customer (KYC) checks or use Advanzia’s white-label alternatives.
Innovating while controlling costs
With banking evolving at a furious pace, Advanzia knew its business process and strategy needed to be revolutionised along with its IT infrastructure. The bank’s ambitious goals and all-or-nothing approach to the cloud called for an ambitious budget to match. It significantly invested in its providers, solutions and especially people, providing upskilling training and nurturing a company-wide culture of innovation.
This process sparked a transformation journey in two phases. First, Advanzia experimented with several cloud services and proofs of concept to find the right solutions to achieve its goals. This phase allowed the bank to avoid rocketing costs while exploring innovative approaches.
Then, once the ideal cloud solutions were identified, Advanzia implemented stable, cost-optimised cloud strategies in line with its operating model. This meant the bank could shift IT from a capital to an operational expense, allowing it to scale costs, stay agile and pay for services when and where they were needed.
Building a robust partner ecosystem
Partnering with cloud providers aligned with Advanzia’s strategy and goals also enabled the bank to stay as innovative as possible while controlling costs. Advanzia’s cloud partners were carefully chosen to provide the scalability and flexibility needed to quickly and efficiently integrate its cloud services into clients’ architecture.
As multiple cloud solutions are inevitable to ensure a fully scalable CaaS solution, Advanzia has designed and implemented robust governance to check and control the entire architecture.
Advanzia invested significant time and research in building and fostering these partnerships to achieve long-term, stable relationships based on a shared mindset. And, as a regulated bank, the importance of data sovereignty, privacy and security is non-negotiable, so each supplier needed to meet strict security criteria.
As multiple cloud solutions are inevitable to ensure a fully scalable CaaS solution, Advanzia has designed and implemented robust governance to check and control the entire architecture.