Major migration programs linked to Bankgirot’s transformation are reshaping Sweden’s entire payments landscape. They are projects that will transform payments, customer experiences, and banking operations.
In this article, we highlight the overall challenges and risks for both big and smaller banks in Go-Live Management. At our upcoming event and the accompanying whitepaper, we will dive deeper into the solutions and share specific recommendations for each challenge – how banks can efficiently plan, lead, and execute the migration.
Bankgirot and ISO 20022 set the stage for change
Bankgirot is currently transitioning towards being a thin clearing house and establish the ISO 20022 standard across the entire Swedish market. This shift requires banks to replace legacy systems, as well as migrate both Account-to-Account and alias payments to the new modern infrastructure. However, each migration comes with its own timelines, testing requirements, and dependencies. So, when multiple programs run in parallel, complexity grows. This creates both unique and common challenges for big and small banks.
Big banks: Extensive legacy systems and growing complexity
Big banks often face more technical and organizational complexity in their migration programs than smaller banks. This is primarily due to their extensive legacy systems, which over the decades have become a vast landscape of technical solutions and data formats.
Many also have smaller, often forgotten systems that have been ticking along quietly for years. Just mapping out all the technologies is an enormous task, especially when it must also be reviewed for compliance with new regulatory requirements and integrated with modern platforms.
Smaller banks: Limited resources and external dependencies
Smaller banks face different challenges, as their primary issues are not legacy systems but limited resources, sometimes a lack of internal expertise, and limited redundancy. Even if a smaller bank has a modern technical environment, it might lack the internal capacity to manage large-scale migration programs on its own. As a result, small banks often depend on third parties, which can be risky if those partners fail to deliver on time or meet regulatory expectations. Also, there is often limited redundancy in production environments. If something goes wrong at go-live, it can impact customers’ ability to make payments and damage trust.
Common challenges for banks of all sizes
One of the most critical challenges is that multiple major initiatives, such as new platforms, system upgrades, and regulatory changes, often run in parallel. When these overlap, the risk of collisions and incorrect priorities increases, and issues quickly cascade. But there are also several other challenges to take into consideration.
Understanding the project scope
Many underestimate just how far-reaching a migration truly is. It’s not only a technical challenge, as it involves processes, training, communication, and risk management at every level.
The business and IT gap
Many banks today operate with agile methodologies, but often in silos. Still, migrations affect the entire organization. Without close collaboration between IT and the business side, misalignment can quickly lead to costly consequences.
Internal resource shortage
Technical specialists, test managers, and key project contributors are often already committed to other initiatives. This makes it difficult to secure the right expertise at the right time, which can lead to bottlenecks and delays, particularly in programs that depend on strong cross-functional collaboration.
Unclear ownership
Who actually owns the migration? Is it IT, business operations, or executive leadership? When ownership is unclear or overlapping, decision-making slows down and risks increase.
Maintaining day-to-day operations
Banks must continue to deliver to their customers while major transformations are taking place. Without the right resources and planning, disruptions and outages can become everyday occurrences for customers.
Summary: From testing to go-live and the cost of failure
In the case of Bankgirot’s transformation and the ongoing migrations, even short interruptions could prevent banks from participating in key payment flows, effectively cutting them off from the market and disrupting the systems people and businesses rely on every day. But disruptions rarely happen by chance. Instead, they are the result of poor planning and testing, or unclear execution.
At 421, we know that a migration is not just about replacing systems or moving data. It’s about changing how organizations operate, from IT to business operations, regulatory compliance, and collaborations with customers, suppliers, and other banks.
The coming years will determine how well Swedish banks adapt to the new payments landscape. Understanding the complexity, preparing the organization, and managing Go-Live execution with structure and precision will be critical for success.
Now you know the challenges – sign up for our newsletter to access the upcoming whitepaper
In this article, we have reviewed the overall challenges associated with go-live management for large-scale migrations. In our upcoming private event and whitepaper, we will delve deeper into how banks can plan, structure, and execute their go-lives in a controlled and secure way. We will also go through the key principles required to manage the risks and challenges of migration programs.
You can sign up for our newsletter to access the whitepaper as soon as it is released.
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