How Global Banks Use Feature Flags to Stay Competitive

Risk is something that banks are well-acquainted with. In the past, risk might have been associated with change, but today, the greatest risk is inertia. The banking industry has reached an important crossroads: modernise or risk falling behind.

Customers have more choices than ever before and are vocal about their experiences. They expect banks to keep up with the digital breakthroughs and smooth user experiences they see elsewhere.

Banking innovation hinges on fast, reliable, and safe software delivery, but many banking institutions are slow to change, not because of a lack of motive, but because archaic infrastructure and legacy code stand in the way. 

Organisations like Citibank and Komerční Banka have been in this position and have modernised safely and securely using feature flags as a lever. 

Let’s explore:

• How to know if you’re ready for feature flags
• TL;DR: What kind of results banks are seeing with feature flags
• Why you should implement feature flags
• How feature flags have changed how major banks develop and release

Are you ready to modernise with feature flags?

Modernising release strategy with tools like Flagsmith can improve your team's agility and foster innovation, giving you a competitive edge, improving engineering efficiency, and lowering risk.

But it’s a process. Many banks work with a monolithic architecture, legacy systems, and long release cycles. This doesn’t need to shift overnight, nor do banks need to immediately move to microservices, gutting non-production environments and continuously deploying code. 

If you’re looking for ways to improve engineering efficiency and move faster, then you’re ready to start using feature flags. A feature management platform can let you modernise in line with your needs and at your own pace, opening the door to things like decoupling deployment from release, phased rollouts, and migrating from legacy systems.

Finding a tool that prioritises data security and compliance is key. Flagsmith’s banking customers opt for self-hosted deployment options for maximum security and control. 

This guide will cover the tangible ways global banking giants leverage feature management to improve their software delivery and encourage innovation.

See feature flags in action

TL;DR: What kind of results can you see with feature flags?

Major banks across the globe are now bridging the gap between legacy systems and the demand for modern software delivery using feature flags.

• Komerční Banka is pushing to non-production environments 2x per day and has migrated 600 developers to its New Bank Initiative.
• Alt Bank was able to move from a monolithic architecture to microservices and continuous deployment. They now connect feature flags to their backend and mobile app.
• Rain freed up their product and engineering teams from manually adjusting config files. Now they can segment users with fine granularity and control the way they roll out to users. 
• Vontobel increased development velocity while releasing features safely every day.

These financial institutions adopted Flagsmith and improved their feature management workflows to stay ahead of the competition.

Why should you introduce feature flags right now? 

1. Gain a strategic advantage

Feature flags free your teams from long development cycles, unblocking engineers and encouraging innovation. Instead of having to wait on a large, coordinated release, developers can simply push code when they’re ready, wrapping it in a flag and decoupling deploy and release. They spend less time solving merge conflicts and fixing broken code and more time driving the business forward.

This lets you stay ahead of customer demands and do things like quickly testing a new feature on a subset of users and using this data to iterate on it. Feature flags offer large companies the agility of smaller organisations. 

2. Don’t let a flawed release take down your company

We all watched, aghast, as one previously little-known company took down banks, hospitals, and airlines in one fell swoop. One software update wreaked havoc on the world, and companies are still picking up the pieces (not to mention navigating billions of dollars in lost revenue). 

Feature flags offer a safety net that could have easily prevented this. Using a simple canary release—gradually rolling out a new update to a subset of users—or enabling a kill switch, which lets you roll back a feature with the click of a button (no redeployment needed), would have saved the day. 

3. You’ve outgrown your homegrown solution

At its most basic, a feature flag is just a simple Boolean. Enabling these on an ad hoc basis may seem easier than implementing a feature management tool, so many development teams turn to homegrown solutions in the beginning. This can work for a time, but as you scale your team and the number of features within your system, the flagging system itself becomes the bottleneck.

Developers’ time gets sunk building and maintaining the system, and doing things like manually adjusting config files when product owners want to test new features. This redirects engineering time that could be better spent shipping new features and contributing to company growth.

How banks are using Flagsmith to modernise

Modernisation can feel out of reach. Many banks don’t “feel” modern, are used to long development cycles, and are still working with monolithic architecture. The added pressure of regulatory and compliance requirements can make any change seem daunting. But we aren’t advocating for rip and replace. Our banking customers have used feature flags as a lever to help them securely modernise at their pace and offer a safety net as they do.

Some of the results look like:

Improving release strategy  

Komerční Banka moved from a homegrown feature flag tool to Flagsmith as part of a company-wide modernisation project. Prior to this, they were only able to deploy three times a year, which meant that every feature release, update, or product launch had to wait months for a large-scale, coordinated release.

This stymied innovation and slowed development velocity, with engineering time going towards managing legacy systems rather than innovating and making improvements that could impact their bottom line.

Now they use feature flags in their production and non-production environments and deploy daily to two non-production (testing and staging) environments. This means they ship new features at a much faster pace. Engineers can easily accommodate internal requests and move quickly on important updates—this has encouraged an independence that’s key for their move to microservices. 

Working towards continuous deployments

Initially, the team at Alt Bank worked with a monolithic architecture and utilised feature flags on a limited basis. When a strained system and rising customer demands were added to the mix, their engineering team started thinking about modernising and knew they needed a feature flagging tool that could help them be more agile.

Flagsmith allows them to do gradual rollouts and make small, continuous changes in their app without having to deploy a big release or new version. Now, they simply wrap new features in a flag (regardless of environment), and turn them on and off with a simple toggle, rolling out and rolling back features as needed and avoiding the lengthy approval process they used to have. 

They also utilise the audit trail of all the flag changes and user IDs, making tracking and managing continuous deployments easier.

Moving to microservices for your infrastructure

Modern banks are moving from monolithic architecture to microservices, and banks like Komerční Banka are choosing Flagsmith to help them do this. Flagsmith’s APIs integrate with legacy systems, and our SDKs allow teams to deploy features confidently during the transition between different architectures.

KB knew that a feature flag management platform would give their developers more independence to deploy features, which was vital as they started working with microservices. 

They needed to be able to do this quickly, as without feature flag management, they couldn't onboard new developers into the new infrastructure. So, they took a few solutions for a test drive before finalising one.

“We did three ‘proof of concepts’”, says Jindrich Kubat, Head of Development & COE at Komerční Banka. “First was with LaunchDarkly, then Flagsmith, and then we looked at our own homebuilt system. We decided on Flagsmith because of the system's flexibility, the great support, the fact that you guys are open source, and the great documentation.”

You can also enable role-based access to allow the right people to view and change flags. If you’re managing flags specifically for individual microservices, you get more control over feature releases. This also lets you maintain a consistent feature flag state across services, minimising inconsistencies in user experience.

Better control over feature deployment

Rain uses A/B tests to get creative with releasing features to specific users based on their behaviour. For example, they look at user behaviour in the sign-up flow and test which modals bring in the best user reviews. Their team uses Flagsmith’s segmentation capabilities with a percentage segment override. They’ve also built an event pipeline to monitor user activity and store that information in their Redshift Database.

Then, they analyse the data using Grafana or Looker, depending on which internal team requires the report (marketing or product). Depending on which scenario converts more users, they enable the winner (release the feature), using Flagsmith to change the percentage of users for segments in real-time.

See Flagsmith in action for banks

What next?

The opportunity cost of inefficient development practices is starting to compound, and it’s important to begin the journey to modernisation now. Though it can feel daunting to introduce new ways of working to your organisation, starting small and being thoughtful about how you introduce changes will be key to your success. 

Begin by taking stock of your internal systems and development processes and deciding where feature flags could be useful. Starting with a small working group of key stakeholders can help with a proof of concept before you start to introduce any changes to the larger organisation. 

Many banks have been at the same crossroads and have seen massive benefits with feature flags. Here’s an interactive demo showing some of the ways banks use feature flags.

We’re always happy to consult during a modernisation process. Get in touch with us if you have any questions or just want to talk.