The modern banking sector is navigating a treacherous environment defined by dual, escalating challenges. Financial institutions face a continuous barrage of sophisticated, AI-driven cyberattacks from malicious actors worldwide. Simultaneously, they are pressed by intense market competition and stringent regulatory compliance to enhance operational efficiency, streamline complex processes, and deliver flawless service around the clock. This landscape demands a fundamental shift from traditional security and operational models to a more intelligent, automated, and proactive paradigm to protect customer assets and maintain institutional integrity.
In response to these industry-wide pressures, Hexaware Technologies is positioning itself as a key partner for banking transformations, championing an AI-first methodology. The company combines artificial intelligence with human oversight to deliver specialized solutions, particularly for mid-market financial institutions that require robust capabilities without the overhead of larger providers. By focusing on core banking systems, Hexaware is developing frameworks that address critical security vulnerabilities while introducing significant automation, aiming to redefine standards for resilience and efficiency in the financial world.
Countering Advanced Cyber Threats
The nature of cybersecurity threats has evolved dramatically, moving beyond simple intrusion attempts to highly sophisticated, AI-powered attacks. Malicious actors now leverage artificial intelligence to impersonate legitimate users, create convincing fraudulent transactions, and identify and exploit network vulnerabilities with unprecedented speed and scale. This new generation of cyberattacks requires a defensive strategy that is equally intelligent and dynamic, capable of recognizing subtle deviations from normal activity that legacy systems would miss.
To meet this challenge, Hexaware has developed its proprietary Trust Framework, a security model designed to provide a deeper layer of protection. Instead of relying solely on traditional perimeter defenses and rule-based alerts, this framework focuses on understanding and monitoring individual user behaviors. It establishes a personalized baseline for each user by analyzing their typical patterns of interaction, such as login times, transaction types, and even the sequence of actions they perform within a session. According to Ravishankar Subramanian, Executive Vice President & Global Head of Banking Solutions, this allows the system to detect anomalies that may indicate a compromised account. For instance, if a user who habitually checks their balance immediately after logging in suddenly initiates a transaction first, the system flags this as a potential security risk, triggering further verification or intervention.
Achieving 24/7 Operational Automation
The demand for uninterrupted banking services necessitates continuous, 24/7 monitoring of critical systems. Traditional approaches often rely on large teams of personnel for oversight, which is both costly and prone to human error. Hexaware addresses this through its Tensai framework, an advanced automation platform that provides constant, autonomous supervision of banking operations. This “digital-first” strategy employs intelligent systems to watch over other systems, effectively eliminating the need for constant human intervention in routine monitoring tasks.
The Tensai framework operates on a sophisticated, tiered escalation model to ensure that issues are addressed with the appropriate level of response. When the system detects an issue, it first generates an alert and assesses its severity and classification. For many routine or low-level alerts, the framework’s own agentic AI can take corrective action automatically, resolving the problem without human input. For more complex issues, an alert is escalated to a human agent who is part of the operational loop. This hybrid model ensures that automated systems handle the bulk of operational monitoring, freeing up human experts to focus on critical incidents that require strategic decision-making and intervention.
Ensuring Quality and Mitigating Risk
Hexaware has established a strong market reputation in core banking quality assurance, primarily through its development of autonomous testing capabilities. The company’s comprehensive testing platform continuously validates system integrity across three critical domains, ensuring that core banking services are delivered securely and reliably. This proactive approach to quality assurance helps institutions mitigate risks associated with system upgrades, new integrations, and data migrations.
Functional System Alignment
The first component of the platform focuses on functional alignment, which validates that the core banking system delivers on stated business requirements. It automates the testing of user interactions and workflows, ensuring that every function, from account opening to transaction processing, performs exactly as intended from the end-user’s perspective. This prevents discrepancies between business expectations and technical implementation.
API Integration Integrity
Modern banking relies on a complex web of interconnected systems. The second component of the framework is dedicated to API integration testing, which verifies that the core banking system can communicate seamlessly and securely with other internal and external platforms, such as payment gateways, credit scoring engines, and mobile banking applications. This ensures data consistency and reliability across the entire banking ecosystem.
Data Migration Assurance
The third critical function is ensuring data migration integrity. When a bank transitions to a new core system, the secure and accurate transfer of vast amounts of sensitive customer and transaction data is paramount. The platform automates the validation of this process, confirming that all data is migrated completely and without corruption, thereby maintaining data integrity and regulatory compliance.
Delivering Tangible Efficiency Gains
The adoption of AI-driven automation has yielded significant and measurable returns for Hexaware’s clients. The efficiency gains are particularly pronounced in resource-intensive back-office processes. In the area of regulatory reporting, which is often a manual and time-consuming task for banks, the infusion of generative and agentic AI has increased the efficiency of the process by nearly 500%. This allows financial institutions to meet their compliance obligations faster and with greater accuracy.
The impact of this automation extends to transforming entire workflows. Processes that once required substantial manual effort over extended periods are now completed in a fraction of the time. Subramanian notes that workflows that traditionally took eight to 10 working days for a team to complete can now be executed in less than one hour. This dramatic acceleration of processes not only reduces operational costs but also increases an institution’s agility, allowing it to respond more quickly to market changes and customer needs.
Strategic Positioning and Growth
Hexaware’s go-to-market strategy centers on demonstrating tangible value upfront before committing to long-term partnerships. Sandip Ganguly, Vice President & Country Head for Australia and New Zealand, explains that the company is often willing to invest its own resources to establish proof of value for a potential client. By proving the effectiveness of its solutions in a real-world context, Hexaware earns a trusted position and a “seat at the table” for broader strategic discussions.
This approach has proven particularly effective in the mid-market segment. These financial institutions often operate with more restricted budgets than their top-tier counterparts and are highly focused on maximizing the return on their technology investments. By offering to prove its value first, Hexaware directly addresses the risk-averse nature of this market. Ganguly states that the company’s positioning is to become a full-service provider for these clients, building a deep, long-term relationship founded on a demonstrated ability to deliver results. This customer-centric strategy, combined with its powerful AI-led solutions, provides a compelling proposition in a highly competitive marketplace.
