Overview:

ATB Financial is a Canadian and the largest Alberta based financial institution with assets of more than $55.1 billion, created in 1938 that has over 5,000 employees and serves more than 800,000 customers. Several years ago, ATB noticed the shift in international markets and the growth of challenger banks, taking the strategic decision to launch its own challenger bank – Brightside.

Brightside Mobile Banking (Brightside by ATB) is a free app that helps Albertans do what they love and save at the same time. Built with leading technology from Technisys, the Brightside app (hibrightside.ca) offers customers a way to start saving without switching banks since it connects directly to wherever Albertans already do their day-to-day banking.

Implementation Process:

ATB noticed that a lot of their ideas looked too much like banking of the past. To overcome that challenge, a lot of non-bankers were added to the design process. Another challenge was with product design. It has to be simple: ATB set the team up in their own incubator space, away from the daily business to allow them to dream big and then zero-in on execution. It also partnered with PWC to scour the globe for the right digital core banking system, eventually looking at 160. Eventually, they chose Technisys for offering a high degree of flexibility and enabled us to customize the value proposition and customer experience in a non-traditional way. Eventually Brightside was powered by Technisys’ Cyberbank Core and Cyberbank Digital end-to-end platform.

The implementation team for the project consisted of 114 dedicated resources including 8 scrum teams composed of developers, quality assessment personnel and business analysts. In the beginning of the Project, the Agile Methodology was implemented with the usage of the best practices and ceremonies recommended in the Agile framework, for instance: open backlog, 2-weeks sprints, scheduled releases. As the Product evolved and the complexity of the features implemented increased (as well as the dependencies among them) the Project adopted the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®). That provided a more efficient delivery value on a regular and predictable schedule. Currently, the project runs over Program Increments of 4 sprints, each of 2 weeks duration. New versions of the App are released to Google store and Apple app store every 2 weeks. The project uses market standard tools such as Google Suite (Docs, Drive, Meet, Hangouts), Atlassian Suite (Jira, Confluence, BitBucket), Jenkins, Veracode, Inteli J, Terraform, Phone Gap, Apache Tomcat, Visual Code.

Benefits Achieved:

• A totally free and disruptive all-digital banking service focusing on customer needs rather than financial products.
• Introducing Savings features that help people build financial habits that remove money as a stress point in their lives.
• One of the strengths of Brightside is that it takes all the grit out of the customer experience and provides delightful experiences that are unexpected in traditional banking. It put customers before tech, and regularly engages customers to walk through every aspect of the Brightside Customer Experience.

Conclusion:

The Brightside app created a seamless digital experience which allowed ATB customers to have more time to focus on the things they love and save at the same time. Technisys’ solutions offered ATB the flexibility needed to provide their customers with an empathetic digital banking experience and encounter financial services that truly differentiate Brightside from other digital banks in Canada.

Key Facts:

• Bank Name: ATB Financial
• Bank Founded In: 1938
• Bank HQ: Alberta, Canada
• Vendor Name: Technisys
• Solution Implemented: Cyberbank Digital
• Timeline: 2+ years