At the centre of this shift is Darren Bak, Head of Intelligent Data at Synthesis, who says it plainly: “We’ve watched the banking space evolve. We’ve grown with banks — and helped them grow in return.”

Traditional banks were once protected by regulation and scale. But today, they’re up against fast, digital-first challengers and customers who expect more — and compare their banking experiences not with other banks, but with Apple and Google.

Tech Giants Set the Pace

Apple Pay works because it’s invisible. Secure, seamless, and simple. Google, meanwhile, is going further — pushing into Agentic AI. At its recent I/O developer conference, Google showed how AI can guide users through product discovery and payment in real time. No standalone banking app needed — just search, click, and pay, all under AI supervision.

This isn’t just convenience. It’s a warning shot to legacy banks: Innovate or be outpaced.

Banks Need More Than Co-Pilots

While many institutions are still experimenting with chatbots and AI co-pilots, Bak believes the real power lies in domain-specific AI agents. “These agents,” he explains, “don’t just generate text. They solve specific, high-value banking problems using deeply contextual data.”

But there’s a catch: AI is only as smart as the data it feeds on. And in banking, data can’t just be available — it needs to be secure, structured, and ready to move in milliseconds.

That’s where Synthesis shines.

Infrastructure That Matters

Synthesis, the recipient of the AWS GenAI Prize of Excellence Award and voted the preferred software development company in South Africa for large business projects, has built resilient, distributed systems that prioritise data sovereignty, security, and scale. Its AI Launchpad platform allows banks to deploy advanced AI safely — with embedded security, real-time monitoring, automation, and cost controls that keep the CFO happy.

In high-stakes use cases like fraud detection, timing is everything. “Milliseconds matter,” says Bak. “And that’s the difference between stopping a breach or explaining one.”

Real-World Proof

If you want a glimpse into what’s possible, look no further than Vitality Group. With over 60 million life years of data, 4+ petabytes of behaviour-linked records, and 5+ billion device readings a year, they’re setting the global benchmark for AI in insurance. And they’re doing it from here.

“South African engineers are world-class,” says Bak. “We’re not behind. The only thing slowing us down is outdated systems and data silos.”

Start Smart, Scale Fast

So how should banks respond? According to Bak, the approach is simple:
“Think big, start small, and get to value fast.”

This means identifying high-impact use cases, building foundational data platforms, and delivering quick wins. One area where Synthesis has seen major traction: customer personalisation. Through rich customer data platforms, banks can serve up real-time nudges, contextual product offers, and frictionless experiences that actually reflect the customer journey.

The Stakes Have Changed

Switching banks is now easier than ever. Loyalty isn’t a given — it’s earned through smarter, faster, more personalised service. If banks want to keep their customers (let alone attract new ones), they need to stop reacting and start building.

The post We Built the Bank of the Future: Darren Bak appeared first on Synthesis.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the 30% depreciation of the Rand to the Dollar this year has not only disrupted business planning but caused major concerns for decision-makers and the future of their organisations. Fortunately, the cloud provides the means to increase organisational agility while reducing costs.

Cost optimisation is a key pillar in cloud adoption. However, it requires companies to factor in everything from their overt costs to the intangible to ensure this is achieved and value is created. There are many factors often overlooked in a cloud journey, no more so than the culture shift required.

Understanding the impact

A migration requires application teams to take responsibility for their spend and getting the control and ability to optimise on their costs. By ignoring the importance of a cloud-centric culture, companies will inevitably experience a bill shock at the end of the month. This is due to developers having free reign to use whatever cloud service they want without consideration of the costs involved. More importantly, developers often overlook how the design of the solution impacts on its cost. It therefore becomes vital to work with an AWS partner that has the expertise required to help reduce cloud bills while empowering teams to manage their resources optimally.

Now more than ever it is important to get application teams to be frugal with their spend. To accomplish this, a company should upskill its team so they can successfully manage the cloud journey from inception to migration. Even if this journey is outsourced, it is imperative that the in-house team understands the technology involved. This does not only refer to the technical team but the key business decision-makers as well. Training therefore becomes an important element of the cloud strategy for both executives and technical team members to understand the intricacies of making the shift.

A good service provider will also be able to assist with a comprehensive review of the application ecosystem and processes that support it. This helps ensure cloud solutions are built in a cost-effective way while ensuring the right optimisation processes are in place. Given the recent launch of a local AWS data centre, an experienced partner will help identify the best programmes to get involved in to reduce your AWS bill.

Cloud economics

By means of a managed services approach, Synthesis will be able to manage the AWS billing for a company freeing it up to focus on meeting its strategic deliverables. But even with the assistance of a partner, there are numerous decisions to be made when undertaking a cloud journey. It is easy to become overwhelmed by jargon, offers, and migration strategies.

Below is a checklist to keep in mind that helps ensure a company gets successfully started on its cloud journey:

• Automate as much as possible.
• Upskill your team so they can successfully manage the cloud journey from inception to migration. Synthesis, for example, offers cloud economics training for executives and technical teams alike.
• Ensure your cloud solutions are built in a cost-effective way through a well-architected framework review with adequate cost management and optimisation processes in place.
• Address the culture of the development team and ensure it supports the business vision.
• Explain to everyone involved the reasons for going to the cloud in terms that resonate with them.
• Allocate time in sprints for cost reviews and optimisation.
• Define a costing tool.
• Track utilisation and spend (after all, what can be measured can be controlled).
• Make sure the business correlates cost with value.

Like any journey, the move towards the cloud needs to have the right expertise, partners, and strategies in place. When this is done correctly, businesses not only achieve cost savings but benefit from resilience, productivity, and agility.

The post Decrease business costs with the cloud appeared first on Synthesis.

Cloud can help your enterprise accelerate your time-to-market for key new products and features. It can help you unlock your mountain of big data to personalise engagements with your customers in real time. It can lower your IT cost base and streamline your application ops processes to be more efficient, reducing dependencies on infrastructure support teams. If none of those pique your interest, take your pick:

So, think outside the box – for example, by picking the number of deployments in production per day as a marker of success. If you are doing the same amount of releases as you would on-prem, then your cloud project is not a success. This highlights that strategy and practice have diverged.

Pick an application or project that best showcases this reason. Set Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and most importantly, measure your progress. This will not only allow you to gauge success, but also drive the right decision making. Give yourself the opportunity to pause and reflect.

What are OKRs?

Objectives are significant, concrete, action-oriented and inspirational while key results are the measurement. Think what does this organisation want to be in the world, and what does the world need this organisation to be?

See this TED Talk by John Doerr for a more detailed exposition: http://www.ted.com/talks/john_doerr_why_the_secret_to_success_is_setting_the_right_goals

2. Turn executives into cheerleaders 

Transformational projects are hard. They require commitment from all technology and business areas. Without executive buy-in, people will just revert to their day job and the whole initiative will become a “side-of-the-desk” exercise.

Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, is of the opinion that “the single biggest differentiator between those who talk a lot about the cloud and those who have actual success is the senior leadership team’s conviction that they want to take the organisation to the cloud”.

Inertia is a very powerful blocker in large organisations. Change needs to be driven through awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. Cheerleaders in the form of executives can evangelise cloud and ensure that the organisation’s culture embraces the evolution.

Here’s Prosci’s view of change management through executive leadership:

3. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel

AWS offers the broadest and deepest set of services, the most comprehensive suite of security capabilities and compliance certifications, and the fastest pace of innovation. The range of AWS native services are broad, and each service goes deep. Most importantly, AWS will out-innovate your organisation. They have an infinite amount of resources at their disposal – they will outpace your innovation tenfold. So get on the AWS innovation bus.

To put it in perspective, in 2014 AWS released 516 significant services and features. In 2015 AWS launched 722 features and services. In 2016 AWS launched 1 017 new services and features. In 2017 and 2018 they doubled that. The pace of their innovation is only accelerating.

Download this interactive PDF to navigate the plethora of new services launched at AWS’ re:Invent 2018 conference, like S3 Object Lock, Lake Formation, managed Blockchain, Control Tower, Security Hub, KMS Custom Key Store, Outposts, Forecast and many, many more.

Common patterns are emerging and there is now some consensus on best practice. So, give careful thought to the services and tools you choose. There should be a valid reason why you are not using AWS native services. Transit gateway and Control Tower are two examples of AWS Native services that will help accelerate your landing zone implementation and allow you to go to cloud quicker.

4. Put your people first

When it comes to cloud adoption, the biggest challenge isn’t technology – it’s the people and processes that must change and adapt to that technology. Identify cultural strengths already in your team to be the enablers of change. In addition, listen to your customer. It’s all about the developer and application-team experience. Identify your early adopters and get them on a learning path immediately.

Here are some training tips:

• Ensure active engagement immediately
• The best results are achieved through a mentored ramp-up program
• Assigning a mentor builds a foundation of subject-matter experts

5. Address the elephants in the room: data privacy, risk and security 

Navigating the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) around data sovereignty and privacy with cloud in a regulated environment (like financial services) can be tiring.

The truth is that once you have assessed the risk of storing and processing data in the cloud, the types of controls required become clear and, in some cases, relatively easy to implement.

One of the initial challenges you will face is how to communicate the fact that cloud-like agility (time-to-market) and autonomy does not have to preclude the governance and control required in an enterprise-level financial services or listed company.

If cloud is implemented correctly, there is no trade-off between control and freedom. Risk teams need to be educated on what the real risks of cloud are. Once they have been, instead of being known as the “Dr No’s” of your organisation, they too can become your cheerleaders.

The post The 5 principles all successful cloud teams utilise appeared first on Synthesis.