Skipton Building Society prepares for the next century of banking with CGI

The UK’s banking landscape has been transformed by the growth of a new breed of challengers driving the biggest change in a generation. CGI has supported Skipton Building Society to meet this challenge and digitally transform the 170-year-old institution to continue to deliver the best service, experience and products to their members, contributing to the creation of a fairer more equal society.

Challenger banks and neobanks, with their digital-first approach, personalised financial advice, and innovative tools, have fundamentally reshaped the banking expectations of a new generation. Their growth, alongside broader advancements in consumer technology, has presented challenges for traditional banks and building societies constrained by legacy platforms. These institutions face the need to adapt and enhance their digital offerings and user experience to remain competitive.

To continue its proud tradition of serving its members, Skipton Building Society embarked on its own transformation journey. The next stage of its evolution will ensure that its services met the needs of existing members and of a new, younger customer base with an engaging banking platform. 

Opportunity

To deliver this new experience and value for its diverse membership (which range from students, to families, homeowners and retirees) and prospective customers, Skipton recognised that the underlying technology stack required transformation. Therefore, Skipton embraced not only the transformation of the member experience but that of the fundamental technical building blocks underpinning their core services. 

Skipton engaged CGI as a delivery partner to help deliver this transformation, putting Customer and User Experience, Cloud and Data at the heart of a comprehensive programme to revolutionise Skipton’s business and service. All supporting the fundamental aim of creating a fairer more equal society.  

Solution

CGI and Skipton focused on collaboration and partnership. CGI worked closely with the building society to build a seamless relationship, where it developed a deep understanding of Skipton’s needs and challenges. Through this CGI has worked in partnership with Skipton’s team, providing technical expertise at a strategic level, whilst providing flexible resource to complement the Skipton team. This has led to CGI both leading key workstreams, and contributing to others, adapting to what is best required to deliver.

The first focus was on cloud migration, where CGI through its strong strategic relationship with Microsoft was able to secure six-figures AMPP funding to drive the migration to the Microsoft Azure platform. CGI then migrated workloads, including databases, systems, and API services to the new platform. 

As part of its transition to new technologies and services, Skipton has prioritised focus on supporting its workforce in developing the skills needed to align with its technology choices. This effort aims to enhance in-house knowledge and skills. CGI has contributed to this initiative by carrying out skills assessments and creating tailored training programs that include real-world challenges, technology demonstrations, and engaging teaching sessions. Together, CGI and Skipton's Cloud Infrastructure team have also developed a collaborative upskilling plan to boost Azure competencies through seminars and hands-on practical activities.

To improve efficiency and link together the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics, CGI stood up a team focussed on building highly performant APIs that enable new front-end technologies to be built on top of the complexities of the core banking platform. As part of this work, CGI defined technical standards and patterns which will pave the way for additional services to be quickly created in the future that can be simply maintained and iterated. 

To aid the transition to a new customer focussed approach CGI led the delivery of a new website which went live in January, becoming fully independent of legacy systems by March. CGI are also now leading the App and Portal rewrite which is now in its initial Alpha phase. As part of this CGI helped Skipton restructure and upskill their UX and CX functions. This has provided the user experience backbone to key projects.

Finally, CGI is taking the lead on Data Migration, leading the workstream with the intent to move 80% of Skipton data out of legacy systems into modern cloud infrastructure by the end of the year. This will unlock the potential of the data and enable AI capabilities whilst removing historic risks and improving regulatory reporting

Outcome

While the transformation programme is still ongoing, various milestones have already been achieved.

• Cloud Migration – The programme has seen all key milestones met, accelerated by significant partner funding.
• API delivery – The API team has transformed and accelerated API delivery from a multi-month process to sprint cycles.
• New website – CGI led the new website project, a very significant undertaking, with over 250 pages delivered within six  months and transferred from a heavily customised Content Management System (CMS) to a SaaS CMS. This will future proof the platform and provide a highly scalable and secure environment. Initial launch data suggests the new site is high performing, exceeding benchmarks. A new customer app and portal are to follow.
• Colleague capability - Having completed multiple training sessions, the revamped Design/UX team have created a Service Design Capability along with best practice design structures and processes. There is also a successful upskilling programme underway in the Cloud/Infrastructure team

Overall, these successes are the foundational steps of Skipton’s transformation with the future bright for the partnership. 
 

The project referenced in this case study was delivered by BJSS, which CGI acquired in February 2025.