When the deadline is real, experience makes the difference

A first outsourcing, under pressure to perform

By May, the bank was deep into a competitive RFP process for a major operations and technology outsourcing - one that would eventually move around 900 people across multiple process waves to a third-party vendor. Three shortlisted firms had submitted responses. McKinsey was coordinating the programme. The target: a transition signed and sealed by year-end.

It was an ambitious timeline for a bank undertaking an outsourcing of this scale for the first time. And with multiple workstreams running in parallel - vendor evaluation, internal stakeholder alignment, regulatory preparation, and commercial negotiation - the programme needed specialist procurement muscle to hold it together. McKinsey, drawing on their experience of Aptitude's work at another Tier 1 High Street Bank, recommended us to the bank's COO.

The situation called for more than additional resource. Internal stakeholders, particularly on the IT infrastructure side, were navigating significant change. The bank still needed to demonstrate to regulators that its vendor selection rationale and governance framework were sound. And the timeline, while challenging, was non-negotiable.

Practitioner instinct where spreadsheet logic falls short

Aptitude's first move was to work with McKinsey to pressure-test the programme plan and agree a more structured path to the deadline. The letter of intent - originally planned for July - was reconsidered. In a regulated bank, Sameem Jaffrey, Aptitude's engagement lead and a former UBS CIO, argued, a letter of intent carries as much governance overhead as a full contract; the time would be better spent elsewhere.

"Where time needed to be spent was with the business - ensuring they understood exactly why we were doing this and what they're going to get from it."

That reorientation shaped everything that followed. Aptitude restructured the vendor evaluation process, organising all three vendors into a series of structured assessment sessions and applying their own strategic sourcing framework and evaluation methodology. A revised eight-week programme, running from early June to end of August, gave the bank a credible route to a two-vendor shortlist and a final recommendation.

The first vendor was eliminated — not on price, which was broadly comparable across all three, but on capability. The two remaining went to a final runoff before a recommendation was made by the end of August.

Keeping internal stakeholders on board required sustained effort. When tensions surfaced in working sessions - particularly with IT infrastructure teams grappling with significant operational change - Aptitude worked directly with line managers to address their concerns, clarifying which processes were ready for outsourcing and which would be better held to a later wave. Jaffrey's own background as a practitioner client afforded the credibility to have those conversations in a way that moved the programme forward rather than stalling it.

That same practitioner instinct shaped two of the most consequential decisions of the engagement. In data and financial crime, Aptitude identified processes that needed internal remediation before any outsourcing could take place. 

"If you outsource a broken process you've got two problems: the process that was broken in the first place, and now a vendor to manage on top of it." 

Both were held back for process engineering ahead of a later transition wave. The data work seeded what would later become a separate single customer view project.

Six weeks of detailed commercial and contractual negotiation with the vendor followed. The deal closed in late October.

A template for doing it right

The bank signed a five-year contract with the vendor - with an optional two-year renewal - before the end of October 2024, meeting a deadline that had looked testing when Aptitude arrived five months earlier. Contracted into the deal: 45 percent cost savings over the life of the agreement, underwritten and baked into the business case.

Regulatory approval was secured, with Aptitude providing the evidential record the bank needed: how the vendor selection was conducted, why specific processes were chosen for the initial wave, and how the governance and vendor management framework would ensure the bank was not increasing its risk exposure. The bank's external board - scrutinising an outsourcing of this scale for the first time - was presented with Aptitude's standback review: ten detailed questions framed from the perspective of a non-executive director, with answers for each. The board was satisfied.

For a bank attempting its first major outsourcing, on a timeline that demanded precision at every stage, the outcome was more than a signed contract. It was a model for how to do it again.

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