With banking roots going back to the 1690s, Barclays has no shortage of “legacy” technology that it is chipping away at – mercifully none of it over 300 years old. The bank decommissioned 210 applications in 2024 and aims to get rid of over 500 by 2026.
The big idea: Cut costs, reduce friction, and better serve both internal and external customers. (Barclays banks nearly a quarter of British corporates, 20 million retail customers and processes over 40% of the nation’s credit and debit card transactions; it is also a significant global investment bank.)
Barclays is making good headway, its annual report suggests. In it, the bank claims to have cut major technology incidents by 58% versus 2023.
It has also been working hard to drive home cybersecurity risk to the board, which “participated in a series of formal and informal briefings” with its Group CISO on “cybersecurity risk and crisis response, focusing on governance and Board decision-making in the event of a crisis-level cybersecurity incident”; culminating in a Board-level tabletop exercise.
Behind the scenes…
At a trio of presentations at this month’s AWS Summit in London attended by The Stack, it also gave a sneak peek into what it is doing behind the scenes – from ETL efforts to how it is using AI to tackle technology debt.
