Introduction
Banking has reached a moment of truth.
The pressures are coming from every direction—open finance, rising regulatory expectations, AI-driven oversight, and digital ecosystems that extend far beyond the bank itself. Traditional architectures, even well-modernized ones, are struggling to keep up. Incremental change is no longer enough.
What banks need now is foresight. An approach that doesn’t just respond to today’s demands, but prepares the organization for what’s coming next. This is where BIAN (Banking Industry Architecture Network) has taken on a much larger role. It has evolved from being a reference standard into something more foundational: a way to design banking capabilities that are modular, intelligent, and governed by default.
Used well, BIAN helps banks move past piecemeal modernization. It enables platform-based ecosystems, real-time compliance, and financial capabilities that can be consumed across industries, not just channels.
Why BIAN Matters & the Run vs Change Dilemma
BIAN defines a standardized reference architecture and service domains (e.g., Payments, Lending, KYC, Customer Servicing, Compliance). This common language reduces fragmentation, enables interoperable, API-first integration, and provides governance guardrails for incremental modernization. In short, BIAN helps banks stabilize run operations while systematically transforming by domain without risky big-bang rewrites.
My Experience: Applying BIAN in a Large Bank. In a major banking transformation program (before my time at Tech Mahindra), we introduced BIAN principles with a clear goal: reduce complexity and enable modular modernization. Here’s what we did and learned:
- Mapped Applications to BIAN Domains
Aligned hundreds of applications to BIAN’s standardized service domains, revealing overlaps and redundancies that had previously remained invisible. - Identified Rationalization Opportunities
Grouping systems under common domains helped us prioritize consolidation. Compliance, KYC, and Payments delivered quick wins. - Created a Modernization Blueprint
Using BIAN’s service landscape, we designed a target architecture to support API-driven integration and microservices adoption.
Outcome: A structured roadmap that balanced operational stability with innovation, reducing complexity while enabling future-ready capabilities.
Before & After BIAN Adoption
Before BIAN Adoption
- Landscape: 300+ applications across retail, corporate, payments, compliance, and servicing.
- Challenges:
- Redundant systems (e.g., multiple KYC platforms)
- Fragmented integrations are delaying onboarding and payments
- Compliance reporting took weeks due to manual data pulls
- KPIs:
- Loan TAT: 3–5 days
- Compliance audit prep: 2–3 weeks
- New API onboarding: 4–6 weeks
After BIAN-Aligned Blueprint
- Landscape: Applications mapped to BIAN domains; rationalization roadmap in place.
- Improvements:
- Standardized APIs reduced integration complexity
- Domain-aligned PODs improved accountability and speed
- Automation in KYC and reconciliation accelerated processes
- KPIs:
- Loan TAT: <24 hours (~70% reduction)
- Compliance audit prep: 5–7 days (~60% faster)
- New API onboarding: ~2 weeks (~50% faster)
From Past Experience to Future Vision
That prior experience has shown how BIAN’s standardized domains and API-first design simplify complexity and produce measurable results. In my current role at Tech Mahindra, I see those lessons as essential. Banking is rapidly evolving toward Open Finance, AI-driven compliance, cloud-native microservices at scale, and real-time regulatory reporting across digital ecosystems beyond banking. The next step is to use BIAN not only as a reference model but also as the grammar for building embedded, intelligent, and governed financial capabilities. Here’s what that future looks like.
What’s Next for BIAN?
1. Open Finance & Embedded Banking Become Default
- What changes: BIAN-aligned APIs evolve into capability endpoints usable beyond traditional bank channels across any channel where customers transact.
- Why it matters: Banks monetize capabilities-as-a-service (identity, risk scoring, dispute management) with SLAs, auditability, and policy controls.
- Example: A retail e-commerce platform embeds instant credit and BNPL services using BIAN-aligned APIs, enabling seamless checkout with consent, affordability checks, and fraud controls integrated at the edge.
2. AI-Driven Compliance & Risk: From Reactive to Continuous
- What changes: Domain events feed ML models that detect anomalies, policy breaches, and emerging risks in real time; reporting becomes automated and explainable.
- Why it matters: Continuous compliance reduces audit effort, speeds regulator responses, and lowers operational risk.
- Example: AI models integrated with BIAN domains flag suspicious transactions in real time and auto-generate evidentiary bundles mapped to domain controls for regulators.
3. Cloud-Native Microservices at Enterprise Scale
- What changes: Domain events feed ML models that detect anomalies, policy breaches, and emerging risks in real time; reporting becomes automated and explainable.
- Why it matters: Continuous compliance reduces audit effort, speeds regulator responses, and lowers operational risk.
- Example: AI models integrated with BIAN domains flag suspicious transactions in real time and auto-generate evidentiary bundles mapped to domain controls for regulators.
4. Real-Time Regulatory Compliance via Streaming & RegTech Connectors
- What changes: High-velocity domains (Payments, AML, Credit Decisioning) stream telemetry to regtech adapters that transform events into regulator-friendly schemas.
- Why it matters: Posture becomes live: lineage, exceptions, SLA adherence, and risk flags are visible in dashboards, driving automated remediation workflows.
- Example: Real-time dashboards powered by BIAN APIs stream compliance data to supervisors, reducing audit preparation from weeks to minutes and enabling “always-ready” audits.
5. Digital Ecosystems Beyond Banking: Trust as a Service
- What changes: BIAN service domains become plug-and-play trust components across any digital journey, including identity assurance, consent management, payments, risk scoring, and dispute resolution.
- Why it matters: Banks transition from product providers to platform orchestrators, brokering capabilities across industries with traceable consent and compliance.
- Example: Healthcare providers use BIAN APIs to offer embedded financing for procedures; patient consent, affordability, and KYC are enforced as domain controls, opening new, compliant revenue streams.
How Tech Mahindra Accelerates BIAN Adoption (Accelerators, Frameworks, Platforms/IPs)
Strategy sets direction; industrialization delivers value. Tech Mahindra’s differentiation is a BIAN-anchored delivery engine, ready-to-use accelerators, governance frameworks, and platforms that compress timelines, de-risk programs, and keep transformation tethered to business outcomes.
1. BIAN Assessment & Domain-Mapping Toolkit
- Rapid discovery: Semi-automated inventory templates and golden mappings for standard banking stacks.
- Redundancy heatmaps: Visualize overlaps and integration sprawl by domain.
- Rationalization planner: Score cost, risk, and time-to-value; sequence waves to quarterly OKRs.
2. BIAN-Aligned API Catalog & Integration Accelerators
- Prebuilt API patterns (onboarding, payments, servicing, identity, compliance) aligned to BIAN semantics for plug-and-play reuse.
- Policy packs embed security, consent, privacy, and residency into gateways/service meshes, with BIAN-aligned API policy sets for compliance-ready integration.
- Partner connectors shrink onboarding from weeks to days for popular cores and fintech rails.
3. Microservices Factory (Cloud-Native Build/Run)
- Domain templates: Reference microservices, DDD aggregates, event schemas, error taxonomies per BIAN domain.
- DevSecOps blueprints: CI/CD with SAST/DAST, SBOMs, container hardening, automated drift checks.
- IaC stacks: Multi-cloud/hybrid provisioning with policy-as-code for RBI/PCI DSS/SOC 2 baselines.
4. Governance & Compliance Toolkit
- Domain scorecards: API coverage, test automation, MTTR, change failure rate, compliance posture, KPIs that matter to CIO/CRO.
- Lineage & evidence trails: Auto-capture of data transformations, approvals, and control results for audits.
- Regulatory playbooks: Baselines for real-time reporting and model risk governance (explainability, bias tests, monitoring).
5. Observability & Operations Platforms
- Digital Operations Center (DOC) with components such as AppGenieZ and Ops amplifAIer for end-to-end observability and AIOps-assisted incident triage.
- Service mesh telemetry creates domain heatmaps for SLOs, error budgets, and safe rollbacks.
6. FinOps & Hybrid Cloud Management
- Cost allocation by domain, rightsizing, RI planning, and workload placement by data residency.
- Cost-to-serve dashboards sliced by BIAN domain tie modernization spend to unit economics.
7. Automation & AI Enablers
- KYC & onboarding automation: Document ingestion, entity resolution, sanction screening, risk scoring with explainable AI.
- Reconciliation & exception handling: Matching engines, SLA-driven workflow triage, audit-ready evidence capture.
- Compliance controls: Bias tests, drift monitoring, and explainability built into domain pipelines.
8. Operating Model & Change Management
- Domain-aligned PODs: Role charters (PO, domain architect, BA, SRE), cadence, and KPIs per domain; quarterly value tracking.
- Skill uplift: BIAN modeling training, architecture guidelines, coding standards; communities of practice to sustain consistency.
BIAN is not just a technical standard. It’s a strategic enabler. It allows banks to operate in two realities at once—protecting stability while driving innovation. The experience from earlier transformations shows what BIAN can deliver today. Emerging trends indicate that its importance will only grow.
At Tech Mahindra, we focus on making this real. Through accelerators, platforms, and governance, we help banks embed intelligent, compliant capabilities wherever customers need them—and deliver measurable value, quarter after quarter.
