A global UK bank delivered a 14-country trade-finance platform two months ahead of schedule, and early uptake funded its own roadmap.
A dominant UK-based global bank needed a proprietary trade-finance platform built to satisfy the regulations of 14 different jurisdictions alongside global standards like SWIFT, because no off-the-shelf product could be configured to cover them all. A 2Oaks partner led delivery end to end across three continents, from the business case through an Agile build, while reconciling 14 sets of competing national requirements. Version one shipped two months ahead of schedule, and early adoption was strong enough to fund the next stage of its own roadmap.
Outcomes
| Two Months Early | Version one of the trade-finance platform shipped two months ahead of schedule, with benefit harvesting starting early. |
| Self-Funding Roadmap | Adoption and usage were strong enough that the program became self-funding for future roadmap investment. |
| Iterative Rollout | Country-by-country deployment let each release apply the lessons of the one before it. |
| Training Library | A library of short training videos was left behind for onboarding new staff. |
| Internal Recognition | The client team earned internal recognition across the bank for the work. |
The challenge
A dominant UK-based global bank needed a single proprietary trade-finance platform, one built to satisfy the distinct regulatory requirements of 14 jurisdictions while still meeting global standards like SWIFT. No off-the-shelf product could be configured to cover them all.
The program was originally scoped as a traditional waterfall effort of 14 sub-projects, one per jurisdiction, inside a bank only beginning to explore Agile. Funding was tied to milestone gates that didn't fit an Agile approach and was split across countries by revenue contribution, so each stakeholder pushed its own requirements above the rest. The bank needed leadership from the very start, beginning with the business case.
The approach
A 2Oaks partner led the program end to end, starting with a detailed business case built on Monte Carlo risk analysis to quantify costs and benefits for each contributing country and, at a summary level, for head office in London. The partner championed the case across every stakeholder, refining it as feedback came in and tracking direct and indirect costs alongside benefits that kept shifting as each country updated its market research.
The partner recruited the full development and project management team, trained them in Agile ways of working, and put a scalable Agile framework in place. Working with the bank's finance teams and enterprise PMO, funding gates were realigned to flex with that approach, and a global governance framework with transparent reporting gave the steering committee and executive sponsor what they needed to decide quickly. Each country ran its own feature-acceptance testing, with non-functional requirements tested against the bank's global standards, and aligning 14 countries across three continents took heavy travel and in-person work backed by frequent virtual demos.
The impact
Version one of the trade-finance platform released two months ahead of schedule, with benefit harvesting starting early. Adoption and usage were strong enough that the program became self-funding for future roadmap investment.
Country-by-country deployment let each release apply the lessons of the one before it. The partner left behind a library of short training videos for onboarding new staff, and the client team earned internal recognition across the bank, with the program's success adding momentum to the bank's wider Agile transformation.
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