Neobank co-innovates with Quinnox to launch a revolutionary banking platform together

Client Background

Our client is a Fintech start-up in the financial and technology cross over space. An online-only bank that offers 100% services digitally, accessible through a mobile app, with no physical branches. They are planning to launch their services with prepaid cards towards the end of 2019.

Client Challenges

Our client wanted to carry out market study and competition analysis to come up with product USPs. Their lack of understanding of the Financial Regulators and translating that into technical requirements for the product was another challenge. The client had limited knowledge and skillset on the right tools and cloud technologies.

They also needed guidance in product evaluation, capturing integration requirements within stipulated timelines. There was the added complexity of integrating multiple SAAS products.

In a nutshell, the key challenges include the following:

• Delayed time to market
• Unknown territory
• Lack of knowledge on SaaS-based tech-enabled implementation
• Absence of an agile team distributed across different locations including Australia, UK, and India
• Strict Regulations
• Strict Regulations

Selecting the right partner

Quinnox was a natural choice given our product development expertise and decades of working with large global as well as boutique financial firms. A decade earlier Quinnox collaborated with Fieldglass (later acquired by SAP) to develop a cloud-based Vendor Management System that attained global recognition as one of the top VMS Suites of its time. Our success stories encouraged the Fintech start-up to collaborate with us on their most important venture.

Solution

In an endeavor to meet their goal of launching the mobile platform, Quinnox collaborated with the client from day 1. Our Agile Business Analysts (BA Gold Standard Framework professionals) studied the markets and consumer trends and advised on the USP options. Quinnox BAs also took up the initiative of understanding the compliance requirements, converted them into user stories that were included as part of the MVP. Quinnox Architects evaluated and recommended products that meet business and architectural requirements. Microservices based architecture resolved challenges around data synchronization, security, services communication, distributed logging, integration testing, performance, and fault tolerance. Other key aspects of the solution are:

• Introduction of the spirit of distributed agile methodology, with an all offshore team working with the multi shore multi-partner model, firming up MVP backlog
• Terraform for Infrastructure as Code implementation and containerization for a cloud-agnostic solution
• Well documented integration artifacts
• Quinnox IP for SaaS-based cognitive test automation for both application and integration testing

Business Impact

Partnering with Quinnox, the client is all set to launch their services by the end of this year. Quinnox helped make sure that they are not burdened with costly legacy systems or multiple layers of management. Inputs from Quinnox BAs enabled the client to find and include unique selling propositions in their product features. Compliance, User stories allowed business teams, development, infrastructure, and testing teams to understand the regulatory requirements and implement them as part of the scope. Strategy documents produced with detailed compliance validation helped client obtain the required financial license to launch the product. Other key outcomes of the engagement are:

• Client gained competitive advantage and achieved speed to market goals with on-time deliverables and eliminating dependencies
• Client was free from Vendor lock-ins as environments were setup and disposed on-demand, saving on infrastructure costs.
• Development timelines and overall project costs were kept low with SAAS product integration.
• Test execution efforts were reduced by 70% with scriptless automation which also helped on-demand ramp up of team.
• 90% of the tests are automated.