Cloud-Native Evolution

Appendix B. Case Study: Banco de Crédito del Perú

Banco de Crédito del Perú (BCP) celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2014. Giafranco Ferrari, VP of retail, and the executive team used this occasion to look ahead into the next decades and decided to take a bold step toward becoming a digital business.¹ BCP’s digital transition is representative of many similar efforts not only in the banking industry, but also in the insurance, retail, healthcare, software, production, and government sectors.

BCP realized that the majority of its fast-growing customer base were young digital natives who expected to interact with their bank on any device at any time and have the same experience as with leading digital services like Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, and the like. This was in stark contrast to a world where banking was done in person by walking into an office and talking to a clerk. Now the transactions take place in the the digital space. And the electronic systems of the past, which were used by the bank employees, needed to be rebuilt from scratch to serve customers directly.

The digital transition team in Lima prepared for nine months to start its first project of a new era. Here are the main actions the team took:

Define scope and digitization

The team began by identifying the clients’ needs and their pain points, ran some economics, and then decided that the digital opening of savings accounts was the right scope.

Implement Agile methods

The team began building small teams that ...