AFFIN BANK Embraces Digital Agility with F5 as a Trusted Partner
Affin Bank Berhad (AFFIN BANK), listed in the inaugural “Fortune Southeast Asia 500,” is a leading provider of comprehensive financial services. With a network of 128 branches and headquarters in Malaysia, it caters to both retail and corporate customers. Its digital strategy focuses on streamlining IT operations, enhancing digital banking capabilities, and pioneering new technologies to elevate customer experiences.
Business Challenge
As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated strategic transformations across industries, AFFIN BANK recognized the urgency of evolving from traditional banking practices to an experience-driven model. As part of its commitment to technological innovation, it aimed to transform into a digital bank.
In 2020, the financial institution launched its Metamorphosis Plan, “Affinity in Motion (AIM22),” for financial years 2020–2022. A key priority of this plan was digital transformation aimed at bridging the gap with industry peers. With a clear vision to leverage technological innovations for business growth, the bank sought to redefine customer engagement through a robust digital strategy.
However, the organization faced significant challenges. Historically, the bank outsourced its IT operations to IBM and DXC, relying on external expertise. This approach, while initially effective, became increasingly inadequate, and the bank needed greater control over its hybrid cloud infrastructure to swiftly adapt to the changing digital landscape. In 2022, AFFIN BANK decided to take a bold step by insourcing IT operations and building a formidable internal IT team. This decision marked the beginning of a massive transformation journey accompanied by additional challenges.
First, the bank needed to comply with the Central Bank of Malaysia’s Risk Management in Technology (RMiT) regulations, which mandate stringent measures for business continuity and minimizing downtime. AFFIN BANK had to modernize its data centers and cloud operations to meet these regulatory requirements and support its new digital framework.
Furthermore, adopting multicloud technology was crucial for improving time to market and achieving operational agility. These combined factors presented a complex and daunting task of overhauling IT infrastructure while ensuring uninterrupted services and regulatory compliance.
Finally, the underlying theme of the bank’s technology revamp was to provide an exceptional customer experience. To achieve this, AFFIN BANK sought a comprehensive solution that addressed reliability, security, and infrastructure needs.
Solutions
The AFFIN BANK team was already familiar with F5 products because its IT provider, DXC, used them to support the bank. Building on that existing relationship, F5 offered solutions aligned with AFFIN BANK’S new goals. As the bank digitally transformed its operations and reclaimed control of its IT infrastructure, F5 served as a key partner.
“Choosing F5 was a natural decision for us, given our longstanding partnership and the company’s proven track record,” says Mohd Hanapiah Bachok, Technology Operation Officer for AFFIN BANK.
The cornerstone of the bank’s transformation was the adoption of the F5 Flexible Consumption Program (FCP). This licensing program offers a flexible and scalable solution that aligns perfectly with the bank’s strategic goals. By providing a versatile consumption model, the program enables AFFIN BANK to efficiently manage its IT infrastructure, offering the flexibility to transition workloads to the cloud seamlessly. The FCP not only ensures efficient management of IT resources but also provides the agility to adapt quickly to technological changes, a crucial factor in the insourcing strategy.
Using that licensing flexibility, the bank selected F5 BIG-IP solutions that included F5 BIG-IP Virtual Editions (VEs), BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), and BIG-IP DNS. BIG-IP VEs provided the agility needed for a multicloud strategy, ensuring scalability as the digital landscape evolves. BIG-IP LTM intelligently distributes traffic, leading to significantly faster response times and a noticeably smoother experience across all AFFIN BANK’S digital services.
Finally, BIG-IP DNS efficiently manages traffic flow for the on-premises operations, guaranteeing high availability for uninterrupted service. To handle increased DNS query volumes and enhance resilience, AFFIN BANK deployed BIG-IP DNS to distribute traffic across multiple DNS servers. This optimization significantly improved query response times and minimized service disruptions. Furthermore, to safeguard against potential DNS service disruptions, the bank implemented the F5 Distributed Cloud DNS to protect its primary on-premises DNS infrastructure. This additional layer of protection ensured continuous DNS resolution even during periods of peak traffic or unexpected service challenges.
While a seamless experience is crucial, it’s only the first step in building customer trust, which hinges on an impenetrable security posture. Recognizing this, AFFIN BANK bolstered their defenses with F5 Distributed Cloud WAF. To mitigate the risk of service disruptions caused by an unexpected surge in DNS query volumes, the bank also implemented a hybrid DNS architecture. By offloading a significant portion of DNS traffic to a secondary DNS service, AFFIN BANK was able to absorb sudden spikes in DNS queries, ensuring the continued availability of critical online services.
Results
Optimize IT with successful insourcing
AFFIN BANK successfully insourced its IT operations with F5 solutions, gaining full control over its infrastructure. This move enhanced operational efficiency and resiliency, allowing the bank to meet evolving technological demands.
“F5 solutions empowered us to transition from outsourcing to insourcing, a pivotal move in our digital transformation journey,” says Hanapiah.
Seamlessly scale infrastructure
The changes empowered the bank to dynamically manage and scale resources across multicloud environments. This scalability optimizes IT resource management and supports the bank’s strategic shift to cloud-based workloads.
Hanapiah says, “With F5 support, we achieved the scalability and operational efficiency that is essential for enhancing our IT infrastructure and delivering superior services to our customers.”
Improve security
The multi-layered approach of deploying both BIG-IP and Distributed Cloud solutions not only ensures compliance with security-related mandates but also fortifies AFFIN BANK’S overall security posture. Acting as a digital stronghold, Distributed Cloud WAF mitigates evolving cyberthreats and provides a wall of protection for external facing applications.
- Gain complete infrastructure control
- Seamlessly scale resources across multicloud environments
- Smooth the user experience with efficient traffic management
- Improve app performance and reliability
- Strengthen security for external-facing apps
- Lack of control and flexibility in IT operations
- Compliance with regulatory standards
- Multicloud infrastructure complexity
- Ability to scale for future growth