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Blog
8th Oct, 2025
6 Min read
Arun Ramamoorthy
Associate VP - Banking and Finance Services Excellence
Arun Ramamoorthy is a Technology Transformation Leader with over 25 years of experience in banking and IT, driving large-scale digital transformation and enterprise QA initiatives. He specializes in platform migration, automation, risk management, and process standardization, ensuring secure, compliant, and efficient transformation programs for global financial institutions. Arun focuses on shaping strategy, defining Quality Gates and Master Test Strategies, and embedding ISO-certified delivery processes to ensure consistency, robustness, and measurable outcomes. Working closely with stakeholders and delivery teams, he enables modern, resilient banking platforms and drives practical value across core banking migrations, consolidations, and leading platforms such as Flexcube, Finacle, Temenos T24, Siebel CRM, and Vision Plus.
Banking transformation is one of the highest-stakes projects many financial institutions undertake. Whether you are replacing or upgrading core banking systems, launching new digital channels or shifting to cloud-native operations, the risks are many – and the failure rate remains alarmingly high.
Recent industry studies suggest more than 55% of banks cite legacy core banking limitations as holding back their digital goals. Even more troubling, only 30% of digital transformation programmes in banking report full success – meeting deadlines, staying within budget and delivering anticipated value. McKinsey & Company
If “banking transformation QA” is to support “risk-free core banking migration,” then leading banks must learn from the causes of failure and adopt practices that make success more predictable.
To build credibility, here are some metrics from recent research:
| Segment | Approximate Failure / Partial Success Rate | Key Observations |
| Traditional banks (large incumbents) | Only ~30% of full digital transformations considered successful. McKinsey & Company | These banks often struggle with technical debt, complex IT landscapes, regulatory demands, and legacy core constraints. |
| Banks pursuing operational / cost transformation | Only 18% are highly successful in achieving their transformation goals. KPMG | Many overestimate readiness or underestimate change-management, governance, cross-functional alignment. |
| Retail banking (especially “laggards”) | A large share are “slow starters” in terms of digital-transformation maturity. In one study, 57% of banks remained “slow starters,” down from ~70% a year before, indicating gradual progress but still significant lag. Publicis Sapient | These banks often struggle to scale automation, unify data, simplify operations. |
| Neobanks / challenger banks | Not all data is publicly available, but many neobanks are ahead on certain KPIs, such as digital adoption, customer experience, and agility, but also exposed to failures in scaling, regulatory compliance, or integration with legacy systems. Benchmark studies show that “operational evangelists” (which often include neobanks) have embraced automation and streamlined platforms. Publicis Sapient | Speed is not enough: risk and quality still must be managed. |
Benchmark for QA / Transformation Investment:
These numbers suggest that while banks recognise the need for investment, much of it still goes to keeping the lights on rather than enabling risk-mitigating transformation.
Drawing on empirical studies and sector benchmarks, these are the frequent gaps that cause banking transformation programmes to underdeliver or fail:
Combining what works in the research and what leading banks are doing, here are the levers that can increase success dramatically:
In McKinsey’s study “Why most digital banking transformations fail—and how to flip the odds”, banks that succeeded did more than just throw money at technology. They:
In another report, KPMG: Banking transformation: The new agenda, just 18% of banking leaders said they had been highly successful in achieving their transformation goals. However, those with clear cost objectives, strong change management and well-funded programmes performed markedly better. KPMG
These successes weren’t always from large, well-resourced banks. They were from banks that treated QA as part of risk mitigation, not as overhead.
The data makes it clear: “banking transformation QA” matters as much as the technology, the strategy or the customer-experience ambitions. A failed transformation programme often reflects a failure to manage quality, risk, data and governance, not just a mis-step in technical execution.
For leaders responsible for digital transformation or core banking migration, the target must be predictable outcomes with minimal risk. That implies:
If banks can do this well, “risk-free core banking migration” becomes less of a slogan and more of an achievable objective.
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