Manulife Bank | Agile Transformation for Digital Banking
Manulife Bank needed to refresh its online and mobile banking products while upgrading the APIs that powered them. More importantly, its engineering teams had to adopt Agile practices and modern tools to increase productivity, accelerate delivery, and deliver stronger customer experiences.
Impact Delivered
Challenge
The bank’s digital platforms and engineering culture faced several obstacles:
Low team velocity and downward pressure on productivity
Poor customer satisfaction due to outdated UX
Legacy stack (IBM Websphere, Enterprise JavaBeans) limiting scalability and new capabilities
Constrained analytics and lack of flexibility for growth
Manulife Bank needed more than a technology upgrade. They needed an organizational shift toward Agile development, cloud-native architecture, and user-focused product delivery.
Solution
TribalScale began with a technical discovery workshop to clarify the biggest pain points and align on business goals. With those insights, we defined tailored outcomes:
Create an incubator-style proof of concept for a refreshed online banking site.
Deliver a minimum viable product (MVP) website focused on top user flows.
Re-platform using React, Node.js, and Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF).
Coach the engineering team on Agile cadences, extreme programming (XP), pair programming, and test-driven development (TDD).
Throughout the engagement, TribalScale engineers pair programmed daily with Manulife’s team, providing live coaching and ensuring that knowledge transfer stuck.
Tools and Technologies Used:
React
Microsoft Azure
Selenium
Git
Outcome
The engagement delivered more than a modernized banking site. Manulife Bank’s engineering team adopted a new culture of delivery: agile cadences, modern frameworks, and confidence in building cloud-native solutions. Today, the team continues to drive transformation from within, applying TribalScale’s coaching across future initiatives.
Why It Matters
Modern banking is digital-first. By aligning engineering practices with modern stacks and Agile delivery, Manulife Bank can continuously improve experiences for customers while maintaining its reputation as a branchless banking pioneer.