NatWest's Market Lens: what the leading digital banks got right.
Over the past decade, digital-first challengers have rewritten the rules of banking. By building their technology stacks from the ground up, they’ve gained the agility to launch products in weeks, personalise services in real time, and adapt rapidly to regulatory and market change. Their full-stack control has allowed them to iterate quickly and deliver seamless, customer-centric experiences at scale.
But that agility has come at a price — often years of R&D investment, high burn rates, and the constant pressure of maintaining complex in-house systems. Tier 1 banks don’t need to replicate that risk to match or surpass these capabilities. By selectively adopting cloud-native, modular architectures — combining a modern core, AI-ready data foundations, and a flexible digital experience layer — established banks can leapfrog the innovation curve, simplify their technology landscape, and compete on customer value rather than system complexity.
Your strategic blueprint
A De-Risked Path to Modernisation at Pace
Modernising at pace doesn’t have to mean taking on the full risk of building from scratch.
By combining a modular, cloud-native core with an AI-ready data foundation and a flexible digital experience layer, banks can achieve agility without sacrificing control. This blueprint enables you to simplify, scale, and innovate faster, safer, and with measurable impact.
-
Accelerated Delivery: Launch new capabilities in months, not years.
-
Lower Risk: Proven architecture reduces delivery and operational uncertainty.
-
Future-Ready Data & AI: Unlock insights and automation across the bank.
-
Customer-Centric Agility: Rapidly adapt products and services to market needs.
Build vs. Buy vs. Partner — Making the Right Strategic Bet
Choosing the right modernisation strategy isn’t just a technology decision — it’s a multi-year commitment that shapes cost structures, competitive agility, and your ability to respond to market shifts.
Some banks choose to build in-house to maximise control, but face long delivery cycles, spiralling costs, and heavy demands on scarce talent. Others opt for traditional vendor solutions, trading agility and differentiation for predictability. We believe there is a smarter third path: partnering to co-create a modular, cloud-native foundation that preserves your strategic ownership while accelerating delivery and reducing risk.
Build vs Buy
Comparing approaches
| Build in-house | Traditional vendor | Thought Machine | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost predictability | ❌ High variability over project life | ❌ Predictable, but often with inflexible commercial terms | ✅ Predictable, right-sized to scope and pace |
| Speed to Market | ❌ Long development cycles | ❌ Often slowed by waterfall delivery | ✅ Agile, iterative releases in months, not years |
| Strategic Control | ❌ Full control but high resource load | ❌ Limited control over roadmap | ✅ Joint roadmap with strategic ownership retained |
| Architecture Fit | ❌ Legacy risk without constant reinvestment | ❌ Legacy-heavy, limited modularity | ✅ Cloud-native, AI-ready, composable |
| Risk Profile | ❌ High delivery and operational risk | ✅ Lower, but with lock-in risk | ✅ Lower, with flexibility to evolve over time |
Vault Core
The only choice to truly innovate
In our experience, the most successful Tier 1 transformations strike a balance between ownership and acceleration. By partnering, you can retain strategic control of your technology direction while leveraging proven, cloud-native capabilities to deliver outcomes faster, with lower risk and greater cost certainty. This approach avoids the pitfalls of over-investing in bespoke build programmes or locking into inflexible vendor platforms — giving you the freedom to innovate at pace while keeping your competitive edge.