Build vs Buy: How foreign banks can turn their AI vision into measurable advantage

The contents of this blog are for general information purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Association of Foreign Banks disclaims liability for actions taken based on the materials. Readers should consult their legal advisers.

For most banks, the build vs buy decision is complex enough. But for foreign banks with UK subsidiaries operating across multiple markets, it’s even more complicated. After all, such international firms aren’t selecting the right technology for just one regulatory environment: they’re choosing for all of them simultaneously.

Consider the position of an institution like Habib Bank AG Zurich, headquartered in Switzerland, operating across the UK, the Middle East and South Asia, and seeking to drive growth whilst navigating an overlapping patchwork of local regulatory obligations. Or the growing number of Middle Eastern banks with established UK presences that are now expanding into the EU.

These institutions share a common tension – namely, driving global ambition whilst managing local compliance. Here, the build vs buy dilemma is particularly acute, especially as 78% of organisations now use AI in at least one business function.

We believe that for foreign banks, the case for buying a proven, configurable platform is compelling. Our most recent data highlights that this approach is 5 x faster to market than building in-house and delivers 20-30% productivity gains within as little as 18 months.  Let’s explore in more detail…

Why building AI in-house won’t work for foreign banks

Driving measurable advantage from AI requires a unified, high-quality data foundation, domain-specific model training, regulatory explainability frameworks, and ongoing governance infrastructure.

Together, these represent a multi-year, multi-million-pound programme with no guarantee of success. According to BCG, only 26% of companies have moved beyond AI proofs of concept, and 70% of the failures to derive advantage relate to people and process, not technology.

But foreign banks face additional structural challenges:

• Complex regulation: A foreign bank managing operations across the UK, EU, and Middle East must navigate the FCA, PRA, EBA guidelines, as well as a raft of local regulations simultaneously
• Dispersed talent: Building a world-class AI engineering team in one jurisdiction is hard enough, but assembling one that understands banking regulation across every country of operation is exponentially more challenging
• Data fragmentation: The more markets covered, the more siloed operational data exists, making it difficult to normalise data at scale
• Increased competition: And while foreign banks navigate all of this internally, cloud-native fintechs and large global competitors are deploying AI at pace, with none of the same constraints

The real advantage: intelligence built for complexity

Take the Habib Bank AG Zurich experience as an example. The Bank has long maintained its own development team, and like so many foreign banks with operations in the UK and around the world, it faced the buy vs build challenge. Ultimately, its decision to buy came down to the issues described above – time-to-market, adaptability across shifting regulatory environments, and access to AI capabilities that would have taken longer to build internally. Buy emerged as the clear choice; not as a future promise, but as the best-in-class off-the shelf option for measurable advantage – investing in a platform with AI already embedded and tested across diverse markets.

The lesson from the Habib Bank AG Zurich story is that building to match a purpose-built platform is a race that ends before it starts. For foreign banks managing operations across multiple regulatory regimes, every month spent building in-house is a month competitors are deploying.

A smarter approach: buy the foundation, build the advantage

The strongest foreign banks aren’t choosing between build and buy; they’re doing both strategically. They buy proven, compliant, configurable foundations with core workflows, AI capabilities, operational analytics, and direct their internal development energy toward genuine competitive differentiators such as proprietary credit models, relationship management approaches, and market-specific product innovation.

So, in conclusion, when considering buy vs build, foreign banks should instead think hybrid. A modular, flexible architecture allows institutions to adopt capabilities incrementally, starting with targeted productivity tools and progressing through agentic AI to fully autonomous AI-native banking operations, all while retaining the configurability to adapt to the specific requirements of each market they operate in.

Banking in a new era of intelligence. Join us at our London Summit

This year’s nCino EMEA Summit (30 September, London) is built around exactly the challenges foreign banks face: turning AI vision into measurable outcomes, benchmarking against the EU’s and the Middle East’s highest-performing institutions and understanding how Agentic AI and CLM are reshaping the industry. Hear directly from institutions that have moved from pilot to production and take away frameworks you can implement the moment you return to your desk.  Register here.

Can’t wait until September? Download our latest Buy vs Build whitepaper today.

Authored by

Ben Ussher-Stanley

Principal Commercial & Mortgage Lending Strategist, EMEA, nCino

Ben spent eight years inside banking before moving to the vendor side. That experience – managing KYC programmes, navigating credit decisions, and living inside the operational reality of a major institution – shapes everything he shares. Now nCino’s Principal Commercial and Mortgage Lending Strategist for EMEA, he works with C-suite leaders across 40+ countries on commercial and mortgage lending transformation.

Sponsored by

nCino is the platform of choice for financial institutions navigating digital transformation on a global scale. Founded to help banks digitise and reengineer their most critical business processes, nCino serves over 2,700 customers worldwide — including many of the largest and most complex financial institutions across international markets. Its intelligent, cloud-based platform is built to meet the demands of cross-border banking, supporting multiple languages, regulatory environments, and local market nuances while delivering a consistent, enterprise-grade experience. By bringing together people, AI, and data, nCino helps international banks consolidate legacy systems, strengthen risk management, and make faster, more confident decisions — wherever they operate.

You can find out more about nCino here.