Leading analysts from IDC, TBR and Celent highlight how the Financial Services Advisor & Analyst Day established a bold AI-intrinsic strategy: embedding AI into every layer of operations.

TBR’s Senior Analyst, Kelly Lesiczka, notes that HCLTech is investing heavily in its AI platform ecosystem – notably AI Force, AI Foundry and the global AI Labs – to drive efficiency and value at scale. She points out that our AI-intrinsic point of view, secures our positioning around AI along with our trust-based relationships with clients, to effectively address key market needs around efficiency and modernization.

Pete Marston, Senior Research Director at IDC highlights that the day showed our shift towards AI-intrinsic strategy, outcome-based, IP-led service delivery supported by proprietary AI platforms and strategic partnerships, with a focus on cost efficiency, innovation and domain-specific AI solutions.

Celent’s Kolin Kerr reflects on a fireside chat between us and a leading bank in the US during the event, that it’s interesting to reimagine Agentic AI systems to self-heal and patch the ankle biter issues before they escalate.

HCLTech CEO & Managing Director, C. Vijayakumar, articulated this vision and delved deeper into how we are shaping the future with AI-intrinsic design, which is not an add-on, but the very foundation of our architecture.

In practical terms, HCLTech has rolled out real client use cases (for example, GenAI used in anomaly detection) that have yielded dramatic productivity gains. The aim is to provide clients with a platform that supports not only software development life cycles but also the operations lifecycle, enhancing overall efficiency.

In TBR’s view, this move toward an “engineering and platform-based mindset” allows HCLTech to stitch together systems, accelerate time-to-market and embed Responsible AI governance across deployments.

Shifting to a platform-first delivery model

HCLTech’s transformation is rooted in an evolution away from traditional outsourcing toward outcome-based, IP-led delivery models. This shift is powered by a portfolio of proprietary AI platforms:

• AI Force, launched in March 2024, streamlines the software development and engineering lifecycle. With recent upgrades, it now supports agentic workflows that accelerate efficiency and time-to-market.
• AI Foundry targets cognitive infrastructure and value stream transformation, using AI and modernized data to improve business operations.
• AI Labs, based across the UK, US, India, Singapore and Germany, help clients move from ideation to MVP and serve as hubs for developing repeatable, responsible, industry-specific solutions.

This platform ecosystem is designed to enable scalable innovation across transformation programs, reducing operational friction and shortening the path from insight to execution.

Pete Marston, Senior Research Director at IDC, remarked: “The day highlighted HCLTech’s shift toward outcome-based, IP-led service delivery supported by proprietary AI platforms and strategic partnerships, with a focus on cost efficiency, innovation and domain-specific AI solutions.”

Real-world transformation with measurable ROI

Case studies presented by HCLTech reinforce the practical impact of its AI strategy:

• A major US investment bank improved productivity by 60% using Agentic AI for stock price anomaly detection
• A US-based insurer achieved 20–30% cost savings through a multi-year modernization program, supported by GitAI for code development and automation
• The head of platform transformation at a top 5 US bank highlighted how their retail banking production operations are being transformed with HCLTech and the deployment of Agentic AI to heal and patch production issues before they escalate to major, business-critical issues
• The company is targeting 30%+ cost savings through AI and has developed automation “recipes” across a dozen areas to deliver efficiencies for its top 100 clients

These outcomes reflect HCLTech’s continued focus on maximizing revenue per employee. In Q1 FY25, the company led its peer group with $62,360 in revenue per employee.

Financial Services: Verticalized, modernized and AI-powered

HCLTech’s Financial Services practice, led by Srinivasan Seshadri, is grounded in five key pillars: engineering DNA, outcome orientation, challenger mindset, verticalized services and innovation. HCLTech’s Financial Services vertical has demonstrated industry-leading growth, recording the highest two-year CAGR among all peers.

A few years ago, HCLTech unified its service lines under a single vertical model, which allowed it to combine domain depth with technical delivery. This structure enhances the company’s ability to build domain-specific AI solutions tailored to the nuanced demands of financial services, including areas like regulatory compliance, fraud prevention and autonomous operations.

This verticalized model is especially effective as financial institutions adopt GenAI and digital modernization initiatives. HCLTech's approach allows it to tailor solutions to each client’s maturity level, balancing regulatory, governance and transformation requirements with an understanding of client-specific culture and readiness.

Responsible AI and agentic automation

Vijay Guntur, CTO at HCLTech, highlighted that the AI strategy spans operational efficiency, innovation acceleration, customer experience and risk management. Our portfolio builds on a strong foundation of automation and expands into GenAI-driven use cases such as IT operations automation, legacy code modernization and accelerated application development—strengthened further by industry-specific, repeatable solutions and deep engineering excellence.

As clients in financial services increasingly seek enterprise-wide AI deployments, demand is also rising for Responsible AI frameworks. HCLTech supports clients in building governance models, ensuring transparency and incorporating human oversight in compliance-sensitive use cases. The company’s AI Labs play a central role in developing and scaling these frameworks in real-world environments.

Experience-driven digital business delivery

During a fireside chat with a leading bank in the US on the analyst and advisor day, Ananth Subramanya, EVP of Digital Business Services at HCLTech, highlighted the industrywide shift in “consumer loyalty from a physical product to the experience, with experience driving the engagement.”

HCLTech’s Digital Business Services group has responded with a modular, composable delivery model, likened to LEGO blocks, that allows product teams to innovate while maintaining enterprise-grade stability, security and compliance.

Core modernization & Insurance transformation

In a compelling conversation, Kiran Tappita, SVP, Financial Services and leaders from a top global insurer reflected on a 24-year transformation journey with HCLTech. The session highlighted a 360° partnership spanning infrastructure, digital, data, compliance and core modernization, emphasizing moving from traditional models to outcome-based transformation — driving sustained impact and agility in insurance.

Panel Insights: The Path to Trusted, Agentic AI in Financial Services

In a thought-provoking panel moderated by Jill Kouri, Global CMO and panelists including Vijay Guntur, CTO and Head of ecosystems, Deepak Arora, SVP, Financial Services and a leader from a multinational European bank explored the evolving GenAI landscape. The discussion covered organizational readiness, trade and compliance use cases and the emergence of Agentic AI. They emphasized the importance of Responsible AI frameworks and addressed key challenges enterprises must navigate to scale GenAI effectively.

A challenger mindset driving transformation

Concluding the analyst and advisor day, Jill Kouri, Global CMO, said that HCLTech’s strategy is guided by a challenger mindset; proactive, platform-led, focused on being AI-intrinsic — embedding AI across operations rather than treating it as a discrete capability.

With a culture deeply rooted in engineering, long-term client relationships and a commitment to continuous innovation, HCLTech is positioning itself to lead financial services transformation in the AI era.