BGTS is a Business Reporter clientEnterprise technology leaders in banking and financial services operate under conditions that have no parallel in other industries. The pressure to modernise is real and urgent, but so is the obligation to maintain stability, meet regulatory requirements and protect the trust of millions of customers. In this environment, particularly across the UK and European financial sector, the choice of partner matters as much as the choice of platform. Suman Alamsetti, from BGTS, is direct about where the real challenge lies. “The important and underlying challenge is not technology,” he says. “It’s more of an infrastructure problem. In banking and financial sectors, the technology itself is the business – its core platform, its core intelligence, the APIs, the customer platforms; all are technology-driven.” And it is layered in ways that have accumulated over decades. Large banks are built on complex legacy systems. Mainframes sit beneath middleware. Middleware sits beneath modern APIs. Modern applications sit above those APIs. Each layer adds complexity, and driving transformation through that stack is, as Alamsetti describes it, highly difficult and complex to navigate.Making the right choice: The instinct to hire or bring in suppliers is correct, but they have to be the appropriate ones (BGTS)The scalability trap When the pressure to scale arrives in banking it rarely arrives gradually. Regulatory changes, new customer requirements or transformation programmes create sudden demand for capacity and expertise that internal teams, already stretched, cannot absorb alone. The instinct to hire or bring in suppliers is correct, but the choice of supplier matters enormously. Bringing in a partner that does not understand how to operate in a regulated environment does not solve the problem; it creates a new one. BGTS approaches this differently. Rather than parachuting resources into a programme and moving on, BGTS embeds within cross-functional teams as a managed services and technology delivery partner, assessing the current systems, architecture and governance before taking any action. The goal is not just delivery; it is building the internal capability that allows the organisation to carry the programme forward independently. Flexibility means adapting with control In the banking sector, flexibility is often misunderstood. It does not mean changing course when things go wrong. It means adapting to change while maintaining the controls, governance and risk frameworks the institution depends on. Any partner working in this environment needs to understand that distinction and be comfortable operating within those constraints. AI: opportunity and accountability AI has moved well beyond the question of whether it belongs in banking IT. The conversation has shifted to operational maturity: how AI is governed, who owns the outcomes it drives and how organisations build the accountability structures that regulated environments demand. In IT operations, AI is already demonstrating real value, recognising patterns across incident data and monitoring signals, flagging anomalies before they become problems, and processing information at a scale no human team can match. But embedding AI into a regulated environment raises questions that cannot be deferred. Who is accountable for the decisions AI makes? When something goes wrong, who approved the model? Who owns the outcome? Alamsetti is unambiguous on this point. “The accountability lies with humans. AI has an astounding power of compute compared to humans and it can support in decision making. But you need to bring in a governance and ownership model to define and govern when things go wrong.” AI supports decision-making, but it does not replace the governance structures that define who is responsible for what. Building that ownership and accountability framework is not optional; it is a prerequisite for deploying AI responsibly in this sector. BGTS brings this thinking directly into client engagements, helping organisations define the governance layer that sits alongside any AI deployment, not as an afterthought but as a foundational part of the work.The measure of a successful engagement is in how much stronger the internal team is at the end of it (BGTS)Why continuity outweighs speedSpeed is not the primary metric in banking transformation. Continuity is. When a supplier exits a programme midway through, they take the knowledge with them, and with it, the institutional understanding of a system that may have taken years to build. That knowledge gap creates governance risk, operational risk and delivery risk simultaneously.BGTS structures its engagements with this in mind. Knowledge transfer to internal teams is not a closing phase; it is built into how the work is done from the start. The measure of a successful engagement is not just what has been delivered, but how much stronger the internal team is at the end of it. What to look for For senior technology leaders evaluating partnerships, Alamsetti offers a clear framework:Domain experience: look for genuine understanding of how regulated environments operate, not just technical capability An embedded mindset: look for a partner working towards strengthening the internal team, not sustaining its own involvement Composure under pressure: look for the ability to remain steady when things go wrong and give the customer confidence that the situation is under control BGTS works with banking and financial services organisations across the UK and Europe, providing technology services, software delivery and managed IT operations to programmes where getting it right matters more than getting it done quickly. Transformation in banking is not a question of whether. It is a question of how, and with whom.Find out how BGTS delivers technology services for banking and financial services organisations in the UK and Europe.