Reimagine Banking: operational excellence in a regulated, digital world

“There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.” The Terminator’s mantra is a powerful reminder for operational leaders in banking. In a world where outages spread fast and compliance mistakes cost millions, the future is something we create – one process at a time.

Our previous Reimagine Banking series highlighted the importance of operational excellence. Today, the challenge is to shape outcomes before they happen by building systems that work smoothly and reliably. The margin for error has never been smaller or more visible.

The operational leader’s reality: pain points that point the way

Banking is one of the most regulated industries in the world for good reason. Banks hold the life savings, salaries, and ambitions of billions. Regulations are designed to protect customers, ensure stability, and maintain trust. But compliance comes at a cost: manual processes, complex workflows, and ever-increasing operational expenses.

As digitization accelerates, transaction volumes and interconnections multiply. The risk of failures, whether technical, operational, or human, increases. In today’s social media-driven world, even a brief outage can become headline news in minutes, eroding trust and damaging reputations.

Around seven in ten banks now have resilience programs, and nearly one in five have appointed a Chief Resilience Officer, twice as many as two years ago¹. No wonder why, as even a short outage can make headlines and shake confidence. Last year, the average cost of a cyber incident in banking was $4.88 million².

Yes, these pain points show where leaders can concentrate their efforts, invest wisely, and bring new ideas to life.

Delivering reliable service – every time, everywhere

Operational excellence starts with a commitment to deliver high levels of service at every point of interaction:

• Consistency: Every customer, every channel, every time – service must be seamless and reliable.
• Expertise: Each interaction should reflect the totality of the bank’s intellectual property, learned experiences, and global best practices, regardless of who or where the customer interacts.
• Resilience: Systems and processes must withstand failures, recover quickly, and protect customer assets.
• Efficiency: Automation should be leveraged to reduce costs, eliminate manual errors, and free up resources for higher-value activities.

Only about 13% of finance teams handle at least half their work through automation, while nearly half still depend on manual processes³. This leaves plenty of room to make operations faster and more accurate. Banks that deliver on these requirements, while maintaining compliance and controlling costs, will earn customer trust, loyalty, and advocacy, all while driving increased profitability.

Pain points as opportunities

Let’s examine some of the most persistent operational pain points, and how they can be reframed as opportunities:

• Regulatory pressure and compliance costs
  Recent regulations such as DORA and the UK’s resilience standards call for regular system testing and closer oversight of third-party providers⁴. Using automation helps banks meet these requirements more quickly and with greater precision.
  
  Rather than viewing regulation as a burden, see it as a driver for process improvement. Automation can dramatically reduce the cost of compliance, streamline reporting, and ensure accuracy, protecting both customers and the bank.
   
• Manual operations and slow processes
  Manual workflows delay onboarding, account opening, and transaction processing. By digitizing and automating these processes, banks can deliver faster, more reliable service and reduce operational risk. McKinsey estimates automation could take on 10–25% of routine work, freeing staff for higher-value tasks⁵. One large U.S. bank automated 50 processes with 5 million business rules, cutting manual reviews by up to 90% and improving customer engagement by 40%⁶.
   
• Resilience in a connected world
  As digital volumes and interconnections grow, so does the risk of outages. Gartner expects 80% of banks to adopt advanced monitoring and recovery tools by 2026, up from just 5% in 2024⁷. Investing in resilient infrastructure, robust failover systems, and proactive monitoring is essential not just for compliance, but for customer trust.
   
• Consistent service across channels
  Customers expect the same high level of service whether they interact online, in-branch, or via mobile. Unified platforms and knowledge management systems ensure that every employee can deliver the bank’s full expertise, every time.

The operational leader’s playbook

Operational excellence isn’t just about avoiding mistakes, it is about deploying processes, creating cultures and leveraging technologies that deliver consistent, expert service under pressure. Here’s how leaders can turn operational pain points into strengths:

• Automating for compliance and efficiency:
  Manual processes have their place – but that place should be reserved for areas where the human touch is vital to success. Everything else should be automated. Use technology to reduce manual work, lower costs, and improve accuracy. KPMG reports 64% of banks have moved workloads to the cloud, and 61% are upgrading core systems⁸.Intelligent workflows can be used across the organization to reduce risk, accelerate delivery and ensure compliance.
   
• Building resilient systems:
  Resilience is the backbone of trust – if customers can’t rely on it to be there when they need it they’ll go somewhere else. Design infrastructure and processes to withstand failures and recover quickly. Self-healing, self-diagnosing, self-curing systems supported by cloud-based failover strategies are moving from nice to have to absolute necessities.
   
• Empowering teams with knowledge:
  The augmented employee is the goal. Think about a scenario where every employee has the combined knowledge of every other employee. It would mean that every employee is an expert in everything. Talk about single point resolution! Equip every employee with the tools and information needed to deliver expert service.
   
• Measuring what matters:
  Cost metrics only tell a part of the story but not the whole story. Operational success is measured holistically across trust, speed and customer experience. Track operational performance, customer satisfaction, and resilience, not just cost. Build dashboards to integrate compliance, efficiency and experience metrics.

The bottom line

Every operational decision should reinforce the bank’s core value proposition – safeguarding customer assets and delivering consistent, expert service.

Operational pain points are not simply barriers – they reveal areas where banks can raise their standards in a regulated, digital world. By automating for efficiency, building resilience, and delivering consistently high levels of experience, banks can transform challenges into opportunities and earn lasting customer trust. Start by looking through a customer outcomes lens and ask, ‘how can I turn my top three operational pain points into strengths?’. That is where true transformation begins.

References

¹BCI / Riskonnect Operational Resilience Survey, 2024–25.
²Finacle Banking Trends Report, 2024.
³Gartner/Deloitte Finance Automation Benchmark, 2025.
⁴Shearman & Sterling: EU DORA & UK Operational Resilience Rules, 2025.
⁵McKinsey Banking Automation Outlook, 2024.
⁶IBM / Forrester State of AI Survey, PNC Case Study, 2024.
⁷Gartner Banking Technology Adoption Forecast, 2024–26.
⁸KPMG Banking Digital Transformation Survey, 2023.