What Cognizant gets wrong in Financial Services
Cognizant's fintech practice applies offshore staff augmentation to a regulatory environment that requires current, specific compliance expertise. AML/KYC requirements, fintech charter compliance, and the emerging state-level AI governance regulations that affect automated decisioning systems are not well-served by an offshore team that processes requirements written by onshore compliance consultants.
Fintech product companies on Cognizant managed services contracts face the same dependency problem as payer and insurance clients: the production system is managed by an offshore team, changes require a statement of work, and the internal capability to manage the system independently atrophies over time. For a fintech operating on six-week release cycles, a change request process that takes four weeks to scope and eight weeks to deliver is not a technology partnership — it is an obstacle.
The TriZetto breach record is a fintech-specific concern for payment and lending platforms that interact with Cognizant-managed infrastructure. A fintech that processes payment data through a Cognizant-integrated system inherits the security posture of that integration layer.
What we deploy instead
We build fintech technology systems with AML/KYC, PCI DSS, and AI governance compliance embedded from the first architecture decision. No managed services dependency. Your team owns the production system.
Fintech delivery cadence: two-week sprints, production code at each milestone, compliance validated at every commit. Full IP transfer at close.
SOC 2 and PCI DSS built into the architecture from day one — enforced automatically by ALICE at every commit.
Fixed-price engagements. Production system in 8-20 weeks. No discovery phase. No change orders.
Domain-qualified engineers with financial services experience. The senior engineer who scopes the engagement is the senior engineer who delivers it.
Full source code and documentation transferred at close. No licensing. No managed services dependency.
The compliance difference
AML/KYC, PCI DSS, ECOA, CCPA/GDPR, SOC 2. Fintech compliance is architecture. We build it that way — not as a managed services overlay.
What switching from Cognizant looks like
Fintech technology engagement: 10-18 weeks. Team: 8-14 engineers with fintech regulatory experience. Fixed price. Full IP transfer.
Architecture review and scope definition. We review existing deliverables and identify gaps.
Scope locked, team assembled, first sprint underway. Working code from week two.
First production milestone — a working integration or system component, not a document.
Full IP transfer. Source code, documentation, operational runbooks. Your team runs the system.
Failed Vendor Recovery Playbook
Step-by-step framework for recovering from a failed Cognizant engagement — from emergency stabilisation through full re-platforming. 4-phase playbook covering stabilise, assess, transition, and normalise.