FinSec Leadership Forum: Build vs Buy: Ensuring confidence in change in financial services.

This FinSec Leadership Forum brought together leaders from across financial services, security, transformation, resilience, and technology. Speakers included Ray Quinn, Director, Security Engineering at Barclays, Ian Sage, Head of Digital & Transformation at Scottish Building Society, and Craig Anderson, CEO of Frontier. The wider discussion included contributors from NatWest, Deutsche Bank, Virgin Money, Tesco Bank, Alba Bank, ClearBank, Royal London, Aveni, Kosli, Forrit, Co-Labs Global and FinTech-Tables.

The session examined how firms make technology decisions in an environment where build and buy are increasingly intertwined. Discussion moved beyond the old binary and focused instead on buy-to-build models, integration effort, supplier dependency, governance, and the operational burden that begins after procurement. Contributors explored where building still matters, particularly where traceability, control, and accountability are critical, and where buying can bring speed and maturity, provided the organisation is equipped to manage upgrades, integration, and third-party exposure over time. AI also surfaced as a live pressure point, with participants questioning how far “off-the-shelf” capability can ever be treated as truly ready-made in regulated settings.

The discussion made clear that confidence in change is not won at selection stage. It is won through commissioning, ownership, and day-to-day operating discipline. Participants highlighted the need to define ownership before implementation begins, distinguish clearly between vendors, build partners and integration partners, and treat vendor management as an ongoing capability rather than a procurement event. The group also pointed to the importance of designing for upgrade simplicity, building credible exit routes into decisions from the outset, reducing unnecessary friction in supplier diligence, and approaching AI through narrow, governable use cases that can be evidenced properly.