Programme Recovery: Rescuing a Stalled Core Banking Modernisation

A UK specialist lender had been running a multi-year core banking replacement programme that had quietly drifted past its second go-live date. The original integrator had delivered a partial build of a vendor-supplied lending platform, but defect counts were rising, performance testing kept failing, and the original business case had eroded as costs climbed past £18 million. The board faced an uncomfortable choice: write off the investment and restart, or attempt a structured recovery with new leadership. Internal stakeholders had lost confidence in the programme's reporting, the supplier relationship had become adversarial, and regulatory permission for the migration window was at risk of being withdrawn. There was no clear, evidenced view of how much work remained, what was genuinely defective versus untested, or whether the chosen platform could meet the firm's volume and resilience requirements.

Intology was engaged to lead an independent recovery programme reporting to the CFO and board risk committee. The first six weeks were spent producing a forensic baseline: a full re-walk of the requirements catalogue against built functionality, defect triage by business impact, an evidence-based critical path, and a re-priced cost-to-complete. We rebuilt the supplier governance model, replacing the time-and-materials arrangement with a milestone-linked statement of work and clear acceptance criteria. A new joint delivery team was stood up, blending Intology recovery specialists, retained client engineers, and a refocused supplier squad operating under a single delivery cadence. Non-functional testing was rebuilt from the ground up, with an evidenced performance and resilience strategy aligned to PRA expectations. The migration plan was redesigned around three smaller cutover events rather than one big-bang weekend, materially reducing operational risk. Regular, candid board reporting replaced the previous RAG-led narrative, and stakeholder confidence was rebuilt through a transparent issues log and weekly demo cadence.