Banco Aliado, founded in 1992, is a financial institution that is part of Grupo Aliado S.A. Recognized as the third-largest Panamanian-owned bank, it has focused since its beginnings on providing specialized banking services for large and mid-sized corporate clients in Panama, Central America, and the Caribbean.
One of its early strategies was the 1993 opening of a branch in the Colón Free Zone, geared toward financing foreign trade. Later, in 1995, Banco Aliado expanded its operations into foreign markets, establishing strategic relationships with financial institutions in Central and South America, thereby diversifying its portfolio and geographic reach.
Foreign-trade financing remains a pillar of its operations, along with interim financing of construction projects and commercial and residential mortgage loans.
In addition to its banking operations, Banco Aliado includes various subsidiaries, such as Aliados Seguros, Aliados Factoring, Aliados Leasing, and Financiera Finacredit, which work in synergy to offer a full range of financial services.
Banco Aliado, a leading institution in Panamanian banking, identified the need to modernize its technology infrastructure and transform its data management. Its traditional on-premises architecture and manual processes not only created delays and limitations but also made integrating its information difficult.
To address these challenges, the bank sought to centralize its data and build a data lake, since the information was scattered across multiple systems and subsidiaries. Consolidating it in a physical environment was complex and made agile, unified data integration and analysis difficult.
To carry out this transformation, Banco Aliado selected IVCISA as its strategic partner. Together, they undertook the modernization of its architecture and the development of a data lake that would optimize data access, storage, and analysis, enabling a smooth integration across its internal operations.
Banco Aliado faced a significant challenge due to its technology infrastructure based on on-premises systems and the need to improve its capacity for agile, unified analysis by consolidating its various sources into a scalable, flexible environment.
As Daniel Gordón, Data Architecture and Analytical Capabilities Officer at Banco Aliado, notes, one of the key challenges was centralizing information, because the data was distributed across multiple systems and subsidiaries. Integrating this data into a data warehouse or on-premises databases was complicated.
This created difficulties when trying to obtain a comprehensive view of the business.
Finally, the lack of flexibility in the IT infrastructure limited the ability to scale and respond to the business's growing demands. This made clear the need to migrate to a more agile solution, such as the use of a data lake, that would overcome the constraints of traditional systems and optimize information management.
That is how Banco Aliado began the process of selecting the partner that would help it achieve its objectives, choosing IVCISA as an AWS Advanced Partner. As Arnaldo González, Chief Data Officer at Banco Aliado, notes, “We selected IVCISA based on a combination of experience, certifications, recommendations, and price.”
“The implementation with IVCISA was very positive because it was completed within the stipulated timeframe, so we're quite happy to have delivered the project on schedule and in the phases that had already been mapped out.”
Thanks to IVCISA's implementation and support, the Banco Aliado team transformed its technology approach, moving from a single-cloud environment to a multi-cloud one.
This transition allowed key teams such as security, data governance, and analytics to build AWS skills, fostering a comprehensive understanding of the available tools to maximize their operational and analytical potential.
In addition, the new technology infrastructure offers greater flexibility. The bank can now add and connect new systems without the limitations of physical hardware, avoiding lengthy configuration and deployment processes. With this architecture, tasks that used to take weeks are now resolved in minutes, improving agility and reducing the implementation times of internal projects.
The bank has gained greater autonomy and capacity to manage its data. Data governance has evolved, as has the handling and management of its multiple accounts, allowing teams to transform information from its raw state to the “golden state” without depending on IT. This change has reduced the time needed to develop reports and analytical models, as well as the control and optimization of costs.
Finally, IVCISA's working methodology was key to the project's success. Beyond the technical implementation, the team was trained to operate and manage the governance of its data, ensuring long-term sustainability. Among the solutions the bank uses are:
“IVCISA didn't feel like a vendor; it felt like an extension of the team that was remote or in another office, but with whom there was a lot of availability.”
