Always-on assurance:
Requirements:
Maintain 24/7 availability and performance for a real-time, high-volume sanctions screening platform.
Meet stringent regulatory, security and SLA commitments as multiple major banks onboarded.
Free the in-house team to focus on scaling and evolving the product, not day-to-day support.
Results:
Sustained high availability for a mission-critical, real-time screening service.
Critical incidents triaged, resolved or escalated in line with or ahead of SLA targets.
Banking customers onboarded onto the production service without compromising service quality.
Global Screening Services (GSS) is a UK-based fintech delivering a network-driven managed platform for financial compliance. Its “always-on”, collaborative service brings banks and financial institutions together to share standards and data, improving the effectiveness and consistency of sanctions transaction screening across the industry. Built on AWS cloud-native technology, the platform is designed to make compliance screening safer, faster, and more efficient for every institution that connects to it.
As GSS prepared to take its AWS-hosted platform into production for major banking customers, the stakes rose sharply. Real-time, high-volume transaction screening leaves no room for downtime, and a regulated environment demands provable resilience, security, and governance around the clock.
The challenge
GSS needed more than a great product, it needed an operational backbone it could stake its reputation on. The service had to be available 24/7, perform under heavy loads, and meet strict regulatory and SLA requirements without exception. Any disruption risked not just customer impact, but compliance breaches and reputational damage in a sector where trust is everything.
At the same time, GSS wanted its own engineers focused on scaling and evolving the platform for new customers rather than absorbed by overnight on-call, incident triage and the day-to-day mechanics of running a production service. It needed a managed support partner that could take end-to-end ownership of operations while giving the business full confidence in the platform’s reliability and compliance posture.
Why Kainos
GSS chose Kainos as its managed service partner to take on end-to-end support of the live platform. Kainos brought deep cloud and managed services expertise, and ITIL-aligned operating model, and a track record of running mission-critical services in regulated environments. This provided GSS with assurance needed to onboard major banks with confidence.
Our approach
A comprehensive, ITIL-aligned managed service
Kainos delivered a comprehensive, ITIL-aligned managed service covering day-to-day operations, incident handling and continuous service stewardship. Working as one team with GSS and its partners, the engagement was built on four pillars.
1. Application and platform support (L2/L3)
Dedicated second and third line engineers, embedded with deep domain knowledge, to troubleshoot complex issues and implement fixes, escalating to fourth line vendor support when needed.
2. 24/7 incident management
Round the clock on call cover for critical (P1/P2) incidents, with rapid response to outages and high severity issues, and full out of hours coverage overnight and at weekends to keep the service continually available.
3. Service management and ITIL governance
A structured governance framework spanning incident, problem, change and service level management, underpinned by proactive monitoring, knowledge management, and regular service reviews and reporting.
4. Service Integration Management (SIAM)
For the integration and management of services from both internal and external suppliers, ensuring alignment of all services with GSS objectives and business strategy.
Built for a regulated, always-on environment
Because the platform underpins sanctions screening for regulated institutions, the support model was designed around proactive monitoring and fast, well-rehearsed incident response; catching and resolving many issues before they could reach customers. Transparent reporting and regular reviews gave GSS full visibility of performance, incident trends, and improvements; reinforcing the governance and compliance assurance its banking clients expect.
The results
Partnering with Kainos for managed support gave GSS measurable operational benefits and meaningful risk reduction.
1. Greater service stability and reliability
Proactive monitoring and fast incident response kept the AWS-hosted platform highly available, so screening remained continuously online for banking clients.
2. Faster incident resolution and stronger compliance assurance
24/7 expert support improved critical response times and met or exceeded SLAs, reducing the risk of disruptions that could lead to compliance breaches.
3. Improved governance and client confidence
Embedded service management, transparent reporting and regular reviews gave GSS full oversight and fostered a genuine "one team" partnership focused on improvement.
4. Scalability and business focus
A flexible support model scaled with GSS's growth, absorbing new customers and rising volumes, while freeing internal teams to concentrate on product development and strategic priorities.