Posted on by Clem Maloney

Cloud Repatriation and AI Uplift for a Finance Firm

Description

Cloud Repatriation and AI Uplift for a Finance Firm

Sector: Private Finance
Service: IT Resourcing & Delivery Oversight
Objective: Insourcing a permanent on-prem Manager, an agency Project Manager with subject matter expertise, and an AI consultractor to deliver a cloud-to-on-prem repatriation and an AI cyber security uplift.

Context

A mid-sized private finance organisation with over 600 personnel faced escalating pressures around cost, sovereignty, and security. Its CISO and Chief AI Officer concluded that continuing with public cloud was no longer sustainable. Licensing costs were growing at double-digit rates, forecasts indicated further increases, and regulators were demanding clearer AI governance structures.

The strategic direction was set: migrate critical workloads back to an on-prem, vendor-agnostic environment, thereby strengthening data sovereignty, reducing licensing exposure, and simplifying adherence to governance. In parallel, the firm sought to implement AI security agents to support financial risk analysis strategies and provide continuous protection against AI-enabled threat actors.

Approach

123.EXPERT applied its delivery-focussed insourcing model to assemble a blended team:

  • A permanent employee was recruited as the future On-Prem Manager, ensuring the organisation would retain ownership and capability after the programme completed.

  • An agency Project Manager with deep subject matter expertise in cloud repatriation was insourced on a fixed-term basis to provide delivery oversight, vendor management, and stakeholder alignment.

  • A specialist AI consultractor was engaged to design and implement agentic AI models, with a focus on financial risk monitoring, anomaly detection, and automated escalation pathways.

Together, this team managed vendor negotiations, designed the migration roadmap, oversaw phased transitions to on-prem infrastructure, and embedded AI-driven monitoring into the finance environment.

Impact

Within nine months, the organisation successfully transitioned key platforms from cloud to on-prem, achieving projected cost savings and regaining control over sensitive data. The AI consultractor’s models improved early detection of financial risk anomalies and strengthened overall cyber resilience.

By insourcing the right mix of permanent and contingent talent through 123.EXPERT, the firm not only delivered a high-risk programme on time and within cost but also ensured sustainable, ongoing capability — aligning delivery oversight with long-term operational ownership.