TIBI ServicesToronto
Technology consulting · Primary practice

Project and program management for enterprise technology.

TIBI Services takes responsibility for the plan, the governance and the honest status of large technology programs at banks and insurers. The practice draws on more than twenty years of program and project delivery, most of it inside Canadian financial institutions and their international operations. We work for the sponsor, not for a vendor, and we stay until the client's own team is running what was delivered.

Dark glass towers rising toward an overcast sky, photographed from directly below
Photograph by Marc-Olivier Jodoin, Unsplash.
What the practice does

Someone has to own the whole program

Enterprise technology programs at a bank or insurer involve dozens of internal teams, several vendors, a compliance function, an audit function and an executive sponsor who is accountable for the result but cannot be in the room every day. Each of those parties sees its own part clearly. Nobody is positioned to see the whole, and the whole is where programs go wrong.

That is the role TIBI Services fills. The firm provides a program or project leader who reports to the sponsor, is paid only by the client, and has no stake in which vendor wins or which internal group looks good. We build and maintain the plan, run the governance, keep the status honest, and make sure decisions are made by the people who should make them, when they need to be made.

The practice is built on programs the firm's principal has led at Scotiabank, Royal Bank of Canada, CIBC and Canada Life: acquisition integrations, credit card portfolio conversions and PCI-DSS certification, online and mobile banking platforms, anti-money laundering technology, a data centre relocation, and customer experience programs. Budgets have ranged from a few hundred thousand dollars to a portfolio of thirty-five million, with teams of more than fifty people across eight countries.

What we are not

We are not a systems integrator, a staffing agency or a software reseller. We do not place large teams. An engagement is typically a senior program leader, sometimes with a small number of experienced project managers or analysts, working inside the client's organisation and reporting to the client's executive.

Engagement types

Five ways the firm is usually engaged

Most engagements fall into one of these shapes. Many start as one and become another; a recovery that goes well usually turns into steady program leadership.

Program recovery
A program is late, over budget, or nobody trusts the status. We take over or sit alongside the existing leadership, establish the real position within a few weeks, and bring the sponsor a plan that either gets the program back on track or stops it cleanly. The Chile online banking platform described below was this kind of work: a project turned around from a failing status to a successful implementation.
Program and project leadership
Leading a program or a major project from the start: mobilisation, planning, vendor selection support, delivery governance, cutover and handover. This is the long form of the practice and typically runs for the life of the program.
PMO setup and operation
Establishing a program management office that the executive actually uses: standards for planning and reporting, a cadence of reviews, a risk and decision process, and the tooling to support them, sized to the organisation rather than to a textbook. The firm's principal has run cross-portfolio PMO work at CIBC and set up governance for a twenty-initiative wealth program at Scotiabank.
Vendor and integration oversight
Oversight of a vendor delivering a platform or an integrator stitching systems together, independent of that vendor. We check that what is being delivered matches what was contracted, that interfaces and data migrations are tested properly, and that the client is not finding out about problems from the vendor's status report. Past programs have involved TSYS, Fiserv, Kyndryl, American Express, Visa, IDEMIA, Google Cloud and IBM.
Regulatory programs, including AML and PCI-DSS
Programs that exist because a regulator or a card network requires them: anti-money laundering technology, PCI-DSS certification, new payment standards. These need a clear line from each requirement to the work that closes it, evidence a reviewer can follow, and a schedule that survives contact with the compliance calendar.
How an engagement runs

Four phases, each with something written at the end of it

The phases below are how most engagements run. Durations depend on the program; the sequence does not.

  1. Assessment

    Two to four weeks of reading and listening: the plan, the budget, the contracts, the risk log, and conversations with the people doing the work. Output: a short written assessment of where the program stands and what needs to change, delivered to the sponsor only.

  2. Mobilisation

    Rebuilding the plan at the right level of detail, agreeing the governance, confirming roles and decision rights, and setting the reporting cadence. Output: an approved plan, a governance charter and the first baseline status.

  3. Delivery

    Running the program: status, decisions, risks, vendor management, change control, testing oversight and cutover planning. Output: weekly status the executive can read in five minutes, a decision log, and release-ready work.

  4. Handover

    Transferring the program, or what remains of it, to the client's own people. Output: documentation, trained staff, a closed risk log and a short closing report on what was learned.

Selected programs

The work behind the practice

These are programs the firm's principal has led, grouped by the domains the practice is known for. Each is described as the problem, the role and the outcome. Figures are the ones the institutions themselves used; client-internal detail beyond this is not published.

Mergers and acquisitions integration

Royal Bank of Canada · Scotiabank

HSBC Canada acquisition, RBC Direct Investing

When RBC acquired HSBC Canada, the Direct Investing business had to bring HSBC's self-directed investing clients onto its own platform on a fixed conversion date. Several workstreams needed for conversion readiness did not yet exist. The firm's principal directed the business workstreams for the group, structured and ran the missing pieces, including business implementation runbooks, business testing and the handling of client mapping exceptions, and managed the onboarding and contracting of new vendors and trading partners. The outcome was a conversion plan the business, technology and operations teams could execute against together, with clear roadmaps for each partner.

Banco del Progreso acquisition, Scotiabank Dominican Republic

Scotiabank acquired Banco del Progreso and had to absorb its systems into the bank's own. The firm's principal led the technology program: migration of the core banking platform, expansion of network access, transition of branch infrastructure and the integration of SaaS and IaaS private cloud services. A related program migrated roughly 200,000 retail loans into the Dominican Republic core system, with data mapping, production simulations and branch readiness run across business units in several geographies.

Credit card systems and PCI-DSS

Scotiabank International Banking, Caribbean

Credit card portfolio conversion, Fiserv to TSYS

The bank's Caribbean credit card portfolio, spread across nine countries, had to move from Fiserv to TSYS Prime without customers noticing. The firm's principal directed the conversion, managed the vendor relationship with TSYS, and coordinated the minute-by-minute dry runs that preceded the production rollout. The portfolio converted on the planned schedule.

American Express rollout, seven Caribbean countries

Issuing American Express cards across seven countries required a pilot, a customer rollout and infrastructure upgrades to resolve legacy performance problems and support the TSYS integration. The firm's principal managed the delivery end to end, from pilot through customer launch.

PCI-DSS certification across eight countries

A five-million-dollar, enterprise-wide PCI-DSS program had to certify more than fifty applications that process or touch cardholder data across eight Caribbean countries, to the standards required by American Express and Visa. The firm's principal led the program as part of a thirty-five-million-dollar portfolio, coordinating a matrixed team of more than fifty people across the eight countries and aligning vendors including TSYS, Fiserv, IDEMIA, American Express, Visa, Progress, Google Cloud, IBM and Kyndryl. Certification was delivered across the region.

Online and mobile banking platforms

Scotiabank Enterprise Digital Banking: Chile, Mexico and the Caribbean

Retail online and mobile banking, Chile

A 5.7-million-dollar platform implementation with a legacy system to decommission was in trouble. The firm's principal took it on, turned the project status around and delivered the new platform and the decommissioning. This is the clearest example of program recovery in the practice's history.

Retail online and mobile banking, Mexico

A 12.5-million-dollar revamp of the online and mobile platform for retail customers, run from Toronto with teams in Mexico. The firm's principal led the program and acted as relationship manager to the local business, securing buy-in and giving multi-geography teams the authority to deliver.

Mobile top-up across fourteen Caribbean countries

A 2.4-million-dollar digital delivery of mobile recharge services in fourteen countries, with requirements gaps to close and mobile network operators whose interests conflicted. The firm's principal managed the delivery, resolved the gaps and aligned the operators so the service could launch across the region.

Anti-money laundering technology

Scotiabank AML Technology

AML technology delivery across the enterprise

AML technology has to keep pace with everything else the bank changes: new payment standards, credit card conversions and cross-border payment services all alter what has to be monitored and reported. The firm's principal led AML Technology delivery for these enterprise initiatives and oversaw implementations across the AML value streams, including customer risk rating, enterprise case management, payment screening and regulatory reporting. The work depended on detailed plans that anticipated cross-functional dependencies before they became blockers, so that deployments landed across business and technology groups on schedule.

Infrastructure, program offices and customer experience

Scotiabank · CIBC · Canada Life

Data centre relocation, Canada to Mexico

Scotiabank's Caribbean data centre had to move from Canada to the International Banking strategic hub in Mexico within twelve months, as a thirty-million-dollar program alongside the PCI-DSS work. The firm's principal orchestrated the relocation end to end, partnering with Kyndryl on the migration. It completed with zero downtime outside planned maintenance windows, zero priority-one or priority-two incidents, and a twenty percent reduction in annual infrastructure costs. Microsoft 365 Copilot was built into the program's governance to generate steering committee dashboards and bi-weekly health checks, which cut the administrative load on team leads.

Cross-portfolio PMO, CIBC Remote Banking and Shared Services

Several cross-functional programs touched CIBC's middleware and back-end systems hub at once, run by teams working in Agile, Waterfall and hybrid ways. The firm's principal produced the master program plans and executive dashboards that made dependencies visible, and escalated critical roadblocks to senior management for action.

Wealth program governance, Scotiabank International Wealth

A program to expand Scotiabank's wealth portfolio across the Caribbean comprised twenty cross-functional initiatives. The firm's principal set up the governance structure and automated tracking that kept them aligned, acted as business liaison for the technology work, including the decommissioning of end-of-life applications, and streamlined the steering committee dashboards and bi-weekly status calls.

Customer experience program, Canada Life

Canada Life's Digital Product, Measurement and Research group needed a customer experience program across Canada and the United States, with a case management system and digital survey touchpoints at its centre. The firm's principal delivered the program end to end.

Where this comes from

Method and tools, in plain language

None of this is proprietary. The value is in applying it consistently, inside a real institution, under real deadlines.

  • Agile, Waterfall and hybrid, chosen to fit

    Platform conversions and regulatory programs usually need a fixed scope and date, so they are planned as waterfall with hard milestones. Product and digital work usually runs in sprints. Most bank programs are a mix, and the firm's job is to make the two coexist without the plan becoming fiction.

  • PMI practice as the baseline

    The firm's principal holds the Project Management Professional certification and has completed Program Management Professional training. The PMI life cycle and standard SDLC gates are the baseline; they are tailored, not followed blindly.

  • Scrum and ITIL where they apply

    Certified Scrum Master and ITIL Foundation credentials cover the two other vocabularies a bank program lives in: the delivery teams' sprints, and the change and incident processes of the operations groups who have to run what is delivered.

  • Jira and Confluence for the working record

    Backlogs, dependencies, decisions and runbooks live where the teams already work. The firm does not introduce a parallel tracking system of its own.

  • Clarity, Planview and Microsoft Project for the portfolio view

    Enterprise portfolio tools are where finance and the PMO look, so plans and forecasts are kept current there, with Microsoft Project or the equivalent for detailed scheduling.

  • Microsoft 365 Copilot in governance

    On recent programs, Copilot has been used to assemble executive steering committee dashboards and bi-weekly health checks from the working record, so that team leads spend their time on the program rather than on formatting it. Judgement about what the status means stays with people.

Clients

Organisations where the firm's principal has led programs

Banking and insurance

Earlier and adjacent: media, telecom, retail and consulting

  • Esertech Consulting

Platforms and partners worked with, not clients

  • TSYS
  • Fiserv
  • Kyndryl
  • American Express
  • Visa
  • IDEMIA
  • Google Cloud
  • IBM

These organisations appear here because the work is part of the principal's professional record. Program details beyond those published on this page remain confidential, and no reference is given without the client's agreement.

Who the firm works with

The people who carry the program

These are the roles we usually report to and work alongside.

White building facade with a repeating pattern of curved fins against a clear blue sky
Photograph by Maarten Deckers, Unsplash.
  • Executive sponsorsThe chief information officer, chief operating officer or business executive accountable for the program's outcome.
  • Heads of technology and architectureThe leaders whose teams build, integrate and operate the platforms the program changes.
  • Chief compliance and AML officersOwners of regulatory commitments who need evidence that findings are being closed on schedule.
  • Integration and transformation leadsThe executives appointed to bring an acquired business or a new platform into the institution.
  • Heads of PMO and portfolioLeaders who need a program office that reports plainly and is used by the people it serves.
  • Vendor and procurement managementThe teams responsible for holding integrators and platform vendors to their contracts.
  • Internal audit and riskFunctions that need to see how a program is governed and where its evidence lives.
  • Product and channel ownersBusiness owners of the card, online banking or policy platforms being changed.

If a program is in trouble, or about to start, and an independent view of where it stands would help, the practical details are on the contact page. First conversations are held in confidence.

How to get in touch