Case study
Keeping wealth-management accounts transacting through three migration weekends
Core transaction systems went offline during a bank conversion, but wealth clients still expected to move large sums. I designed and led the continuity solution that kept balances accurate and fraud controls intact.
The situation
During the data migration, the systems that manage transactions against account balances were offline and most customers lost access. Wealth-management clients were an exception: they expect to transact at any time, one bad experience could put millions in deposits at risk, and the outage was public, so fraud and IT-security teams were watching for active threats.
My role
I designed and led implementation of the transactional continuity solution and drove migration readiness, operational controls and execution across Wealth Management, Risk, Fraud, Compliance, IT, Data Administration and Operations, including controlled decommissioning after the conversion succeeded.
What I did
- Set four goals up front: accurate real-time balances to prevent overdrafts, minimal disruption for personal bankers, fraud prevention, and compliance with privacy, security and regulatory standards.
- Discovered the real process. Interviews and surveys with personal bankers (who represented client needs), a journey map of migration pain points, current-state flows of compliance steps and business rules for wires, withdrawals and deposits, and analysis of past transactions and escalations.
- Built an internal application for withdrawals and deposits against live balances, impacted-account lookup, transaction review with the ability to pause updates, and weekend shift sign-ups so every shift was staffed with the right roles.
Outcome
The three weekends delivered no financial losses and no customer-reported disruption. Accounts were balanced with wire transactions at the end of every weekend, and surveys and interviews after the first weekend found the application worked well, with no findings that required changes. Personal bankers rated the experience 9.5.
Where design mattered
The application was designed from current-state flows and tested with the bankers who would use it under weekend pressure. In a high-risk event, a tool that people can use correctly the first time is itself a control.