Financial firm accelerates product releases with AWS

Financial firm accelerates product releases with AWS

A major U.S. financial institution reimagined its software delivery by adopting a cloud-native DevOps model with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and GitHub. The transformation resolved persistent bottlenecks in release cycles, compliance, and security workflows. Today, the firm delivers with the speed of a startup, backed by the security and governance fitting for a financial powerhouse.

Our work involved

• Enterprise DevOps and agile transformation
• CI/CD pipeline modernization
• Infrastructure automation using AWS Lambda
• Security integration with AWS Security Hub
• GitHub Enterprise implementation
• Self-service infrastructure development

This story is about one of the largest and oldest financial institutions in the United States, delivering banking, lending, and investment services to millions of customers. The firm is investing significantly in technology to stay ahead in an increasingly competitive financial landscape and make it easier for customers to complete banking transactions of all kinds.

Despite its scale and digital ambitions, the financial firm was facing mounting pressure. Legacy development workflows, manual compliance processes, and outdated security practices created operational drag. Releases were slow, and audits were becoming resource-intensive. Additionally, security teams had limited visibility into potential vulnerabilities.

To compete with emerging fintech players and meet rising customer expectations, the company needed a complete transformation in how it developed and delivered software. It turned to Modus Create to help modernize its technology operations with AWS and GitHub.

Challenge

Outdated workflows and mounting risk

The financial firm relied on traditional waterfall development cycles, which made it difficult to release updates quickly. Teams worked in silos, handoffs were slow, and approvals added friction. Every new product or feature had to move through a rigid sequence of steps, increasing time to market and reducing agility.

Security and compliance presented their own set of issues. Processes were largely manual, requiring extensive documentation and follow-up during audits. As regulatory expectations increased, so did the burden on development and operations teams. The existing model couldn’t scale, and it wasn’t built for speed.

The leadership team recognized that incremental improvements wouldn’t be enough. They needed a shift in both mindset and tooling-a system built for continuous delivery, automation, and built-in security.

Solution

AWS-powered agile and DevOps transformation

Modus Create led a comprehensive agile and DevOps transformation at the financial firm. Together, our team focused on modernizing workflows, embedding security at every stage, and equipping teams to deliver at a much faster cadence.

1. Introducing agile delivery

The team replaced legacy waterfall processes with a Kanban-based agile framework. Development teams adopted continuous delivery practices, allowing for faster iteration and smaller, more frequent releases. This significantly reduced approval bottlenecks and gave teams the ability to respond to change more effectively.

2. Automating infrastructure with AWS

We used AWS Lambda to automate key provisioning and configuration tasks, improving consistency and allowing teams to move more quickly. AWS Systems Manager provided a centralized way to manage configurations and deployments, which boosted visibility and governance across environments.

3. Improving security and compliance

Security was integrated directly into development pipelines. Using AWS Security Hub, teams gained real-time compliance monitoring and automated scanning. Shifting left meant the financial firm could address risks earlier in the development lifecycle and reduce its threat surface.

The team also configured GitHub Enterprise with mandatory code reviews and automated audits, creating checkpoints throughout the development process. These measures helped detect and remediate vulnerabilities before code reached production.

4. Creating a culture of ownership

A major goal for the transformation was to empower development teams to manage their own deployments. By shifting to self-service infrastructure, developers could provision resources and push releases without waiting on centralized IT teams. This change increased delivery speed and gave teams more control over their workflows.

Impact

Agility at scale with peace of mind

The transformation delivered significant improvements across several important parameters for the financial firm. Time to market for new products decreased by 30%, giving the firm a competitive edge in releasing new financial services. Developer efficiency increased by 50%, thanks to automation and reduced friction in deployment processes.

Security teams saw a 40% reduction in vulnerability remediation time, while compliance operations experienced a 99% drop in manual audit tasks. What once took months to prepare could now be handled in a matter of weeks.

The financial firm also achieved a 5x increase in deployment frequency. Engineering teams moved from quarterly release cycles to a continuous integration model. The mean time to repair dropped by 30%, improving system reliability and reducing the cost of incidents.

The new DevOps model is now a core part of the institution’s technology strategy. It enables faster innovation, supports stronger governance, and provides the flexibility needed to adapt to an evolving financial industry.