Strengthening Riyad Bank's Digital Foundation through Middleware Modernization

Riyad Bank, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest financial institutions, has long positioned itself at the forefront of digital innovation. As customer expectations evolved toward real-time banking experiences, the bank recognized a structural limitation within its legacy data architecture.

Transactional data resided in the operational mainframe, while reporting systems relied on asynchronous nightly transfers to a separate data warehouse. This delay created outdated reporting, increased strain on the mainframe, and limited the bank’s ability to deliver up-to-the-minute account visibility across mobile banking, ATMs, CRM systems, and digital channels.To modernize its integration landscape and enable real-time data availability, Riyad Bank partnered with Sumerge to redesign its data architecture.

Customer balance inquiries and transactional requests from multiple digital channels were continuously hitting the core mainframe system. The infrastructure, originally designed for batch processing, struggled under the volume of real-time demands.Two critical challenges emerged:

1. Transactional inquiries were overloading the mainframe, impacting performance and scalability.
2. Data migration processes were inefficient and asynchronous, limiting timely analytics and reporting.

The bank required a resilient architecture that could deliver real-time data without compromising system stability.

Designing a Real-Time Event-Driven Architecture

To modernize Riyad Bank’s legacy data landscape and enable real-time banking experiences, Sumerge designed and implemented a scalable event-driven architecture built around Change Data Capture (CDC) and Kafka-based streaming.

The solution continuously captured account balance updates and transactional events directly from the core mainframe, eliminating the delays associated with traditional batch-based processing. Instead of processing all accounts repeatedly, only accounts with actual balance changes were identified and streamed in near real time. This intelligent routing approach significantly reduced unnecessary queries on the core banking system and eased pressure on the mainframe.

To support high-speed access and reporting, the architecture introduced a secondary operational database that acted as a rapid-access data layer for digital channels and downstream systems. At the same time, a modern Operational Data Store (ODS) was established to centralize reporting and provide near-real-time business visibility across the bank.

Kafka-based event streaming enabled instant propagation of data changes across systems, while transformation and enrichment services prepared events for consumption by reporting platforms, digital channels, and other banking applications.

The implementation was executed in three structured phases:

• Phase One: Captured balance change events from the mainframe and routed them in near real time.
• Phase Two: Enabled seamless event streaming through Kafka into the secondary operational database and downstream systems.
• Phase Three: Conducted large-scale performance, resilience, and scalability testing under production-level workloads.

Extensive testing validated near-zero latency, stable performance under heavy transaction volumes, and optimal CPU and memory utilization. The new architecture provided Riyad Bank with a resilient, scalable, and future-ready foundation for real-time digital banking services.

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Despite the technical complexity of implementing Change Data Capture on a legacy mainframe system, the solution was delivered within an accelerated timeline. When the go-live date was unexpectedly moved forward, the platform was successfully deployed two days ahead of schedule on 15 December.

Close collaboration between Sumerge, Riyad Bank, and IBM ensured challenges were resolved efficiently, particularly around capturing mainframe events and streaming them reliably.

The transformation delivered measurable and strategic impact:

- Significant reduction in mainframe load
 Near real-time balance and transaction visibility


-Dramatically increased data access speed across all customer channels
 Improved system reliability and stability


-Future-ready architecture built on scalable event streaming technologies

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Successful go-live ahead of production schedule

By modernizing its integration backbone, Riyad Bank strengthened its digital banking capabilities, improved customer trust through real-time transparency, and established a resilient data foundation aligned with Vision 2030 ambitions.

Riyad Bank is one of the largest financial institutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a leading player in corporate, retail, and digital banking. Established in 1957, the bank serves a broad base of individual, SME, and corporate clients through an extensive national network and advanced digital channels. With a strong focus on innovation, operational excellence, and customer-centric services, Riyad Bank continues to play a pivotal role in supporting Saudi Arabia’s economic development and Vision 2030 objectives. Through continuous modernization of its data and digital infrastructure, the bank is committed to delivering secure, scalable, and future-ready banking experiences.