Overview
BNP Paribas needed to modernise its stock loan management platforms while maintaining stability across critical mainframe systems. emagine provided a managed team combining modern development expertise with deep mainframe knowledge, enabling faster delivery, stronger security and scalable development capacity.
The Challenge
Financial institutions operate some of the most complex technology environments in the world. Many critical systems continue to run on highly reliable mainframe platforms while newer services are developed using modern cloud-native technologies.
For BNP Paribas, this reality was particularly visible within its Stock Loan and Borrow programme, responsible for developing software solutions supporting stock loan management across global financial markets.
These platforms are essential to daily trading operations and must meet strict standards for performance, reliability and regulatory compliance. At the same time, the organisation needed to evolve the platform to support modern development practices and new functionality.
This created a complex technical challenge.
Core systems were built on IBM z/OS and DB2 environments, requiring deep mainframe expertise to maintain stability and performance. At the same time, new capabilities were increasingly built using modern technologies and architectures.
Finding specialists capable of working across both worlds – modern development stacks and legacy mainframe systems – proved difficult. These hybrid skillsets are rare, yet essential for organisations seeking to modernise critical financial infrastructure without risking operational disruption.
Beyond the technical complexity, BNP Paribas also needed to strengthen delivery capacity. The organisation wanted to accelerate development while avoiding knowledge silos and maintaining consistent engineering standards.
Security, reliability and code quality were non-negotiable. Any modernisation effort had to meet strict internal governance requirements while ensuring uninterrupted operation of mission-critical trading systems.
To succeed, BNP Paribas required a delivery model that could provide specialist expertise, integrate closely with internal teams and scale capacity as programme needs evolved.
The Solution
emagine partnered with BNP Paribas to provide a Managed Teams delivery model, designed to strengthen development capacity while maintaining the high standards required for critical financial platforms.
Phase 1: Team Establishment
The engagement began with the formation of a dedicated delivery team consisting of nine consultants supported by an experienced Service Delivery Manager. The team worked closely alongside BNP Paribas’ internal engineers and architects, integrating directly into existing workflows and development processes.
Phase 2: Legacy Modernisation Strategy
A central focus of the engagement was to enable modern development practices while preserving the reliability of the existing mainframe environment. To support this, the team designed an architecture that connected legacy infrastructure with modern application services, creating the foundation for more agile and scalable development.
Phase 3: Hybrid architecture delivery
The team implemented a hybrid architecture using COBOL wrappers, API gateways and z/OS Connect to expose mainframe functionality to microservices-based systems. This approach made it possible to build new capabilities with modern frameworks while continuing to benefit from the stability and performance of the mainframe platform. emagine also provided specialists across both legacy and modern technologies, including Java, Kafka, Spring Boot, Docker, Kubernetes, COBOL and JCL, ensuring seamless integration across systems.
Phase 4: Scalable Delivery
To maintain high delivery standards, the team introduced structured processes, shared playbooks and engineering standards aligned with BNP Paribas’ governance requirements. These measures helped ensure development remained secure, maintainable and compliant with internal policies. At the same time, the Managed Teams model gave BNP Paribas the flexibility to scale capacity as programme priorities evolved, adding support when needed without unnecessary overhead.
Transformation timeline
Phase 1
Team Establishment
Phase 2
Legacy Modernisation Strategy
Phase 3
Hybrid architecture delivery
Phase 4
Scalable Delivery
The Results
The collaboration between BNP Paribas and emagine delivered measurable improvements across development speed, system reliability and operational flexibility.
Stronger platform resilience
BNP Paribas strengthened its stock loan management platforms by combining modern application development with stable mainframe infrastructure, ensuring full operational continuity.
Higher quality and compliance
Structured engineering practices and consistent delivery processes improved code quality and security, reducing risk across critical systems while supporting governance requirements.
Easier service expansion
The hybrid architecture made it simpler to extend platform functionality, enabling new services to be developed with modern frameworks while reusing mainframe capabilities.
Faster issue resolution
With a dedicated delivery team in place, BNP Paribas improved operational responsiveness, resolving issues more quickly and accelerating development cycles without compromising stability.
Flexible access to capacity
The Managed Teams model gave BNP Paribas a scalable way to adjust delivery capacity as priorities changed, without the delays and complexity of long recruitment cycles.
A platform ready for innovation
Together, these improvements created a more adaptable foundation for ongoing innovation in stock loan management while preserving the reliability needed for global financial operations.