GXS Bank Collaborates with Thoughtworks to Strengthen Its Digital Presence in Southeast Asia
Thoughtworks, a global technology consultancy specializing in integrating strategy, design, and engineering to drive digital innovation, has announced its partnership with GXS Group to simplify the launch of two digital banks in Singapore and Malaysia within a year. This collaboration was integral to helping GXS Group achieve its goal of designing a modular technology infrastructure that could be rapidly scaled across different markets, reinforcing the bank’s commitment to digital transformation in Southeast Asia.
The partnership between Thoughtworks and GXS Group led to the development of a seamless and highly secure digital banking mobile platform. This platform serves as the backbone for GXS Group’s suite of retail and business banking products in Singapore and Malaysia, enabling a user-friendly and technologically advanced banking experience.
Enhancing Digital Banking Capabilities
For its retail business, GXS Group was focused on introducing key product innovations at launch. One of the flagship offerings, the GXS FlexiLoan, was designed to provide customers with enhanced flexibility in choosing their repayment options. This innovation required a robust and scalable technological framework to customize loan offers for individual customers, leveraging GXS Bank’s proprietary credit assessment model. This model integrates traditional credit bureau data with a broader set of data from its ecosystem, providing a more comprehensive approach to credit evaluation.
Through their collaboration, GXS and Thoughtworks co-designed and built the underlying technology infrastructure that enables these innovative financial products. This infrastructure not only enhances user experience but also strengthens the security and scalability of digital banking operations, aligning with GXS Group’s broader strategic vision.
A Regional Digital Bank Strategy
A fundamental pillar of GXS Group’s expansion in Southeast Asia is ensuring compatibility with regional ecosystems. Thoughtworks worked closely with GXS Group to develop a framework that facilitates seamless scalability across different markets. This approach allows GXS Bank to maximize economies of scale while leveraging talent from its various centers of excellence.
GXS Bank operates under different brand names across various markets: GXS Bank in Singapore, GXBank in Malaysia, and in Indonesia, it collaborates with Superbank, a financial institution with shared ownership ties to GXS Bank, including shareholders such as Grab and Singtel. Superbank utilizes the same core banking system, data infrastructure, and product frameworks as GXS Bank, ensuring consistency and operational efficiency across the GXS Group.
By standardizing technological infrastructure across these entities, the bank ensures that future expansion efforts can be executed more efficiently. The modular design of its digital banking ecosystem allows for streamlined implementation and rapid adaptation to new regulatory and consumer demands in different markets.
Thoughtworks’ Role in GXS Group’s Digital Acceleration
GXS Bank’s ambition is to enhance financial inclusion and drive economic growth in the region through innovative digital banking services. Achieving this vision requires an agile and scalable technological foundation. Thoughtworks, known for its pioneering expertise in agile frameworks and engineering best practices, played a key role in supporting GXS Bank’s engineering teams as they built and launched two digital banks within a short span of time.
“We have bold ambitions to improve financial inclusion and support economic growth for our customers across the region. For us to achieve this, we knew we had to be nimble and that our build had to be modular and scalable,” said Rajat Malhotra, Chief Technology Officer at GXS Bank. “Thoughtworks is a pioneer in the field of agile frameworks, and its disciplined approach, understanding of best practices, and engineering principles have been a strong support for our engineering teams as we built and launched two new digital banks in two countries in the space of a year.”
In today’s rapidly evolving financial landscape, banks are aggressively adopting digital technologies to enhance customer experiences. Wayne Te Paa, Managing Director for Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance at Thoughtworks Asia Pacific, emphasized the importance of digital transformation in banking: “By enhancing GXS Bank’s engineering culture and delivering a robust and scalable mobile platform solution, we are proud to have enabled GXS Bank to create and rapidly launch high-quality new digital banking services and accelerate their growth across the competitive Southeast Asia market.”
Driving Innovation through an Engineering-First Approach
At the heart of Thoughtworks’ partnership with GXS Bank is a commitment to fostering an engineering culture that empowers the bank’s teams to efficiently create and launch high-quality products. This approach has enabled GXS Bank to remain competitive in the fast-moving digital banking sector while continuously innovating to meet customer demands.
Thoughtworks’ Engineering Effectiveness approach played a pivotal role in enhancing GXS Bank’s capabilities. This methodology focuses on boosting engineering productivity, improving the developer experience, and driving cost efficiency. By embedding this approach into GXS Bank’s technological ecosystem, Thoughtworks has helped the bank maintain agility and responsiveness in an industry where speed and innovation are critical.
