RBC Amplify

Intro

RBC needs no introduction to most Canadians, being the biggest bank in the country. Despite its age, being founded in 1864 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, RBC is the most tech-forward of the “Big Five” banks. Supporting upwards of ten million clients isn’t easy, and it requires technology capable of scale that can tolerate failures. But being old also means carrying a legacy for what customers have come to expect of RBC; supporting old services and bringing them to the modern world. RBC (as many banks) is unique for its maturity as an organization as these legacy services in conjunction with modern banking pose many interesting engineering challenges.

With these challenges, sometimes old or safe approaches just do not cut it. How could RBC stay on top as the most tech forward bank if it did not take the calculated risk to stay on the frontier of recent technology?

About RBC Amplify

As RBC’s Group Head of Technology & Operations, Bruce Ross saw the growing need to bring new perspectives to the most pressing issues at RBC, and the solution was unheard of. In 2016, the RBC Amplify program was founded, an intensive innovation program that brought a fresh outlook to the bank by allowing teams of university students to tackle high-impact challenges across the organization. Students work in teams of four on an assigned challenge, assigned to teams of tenured professionals with experience in the relevant domains to help guide, assist, and mentor them. The student teams are typically composed of two developers, a data scientist, and a business analyst (BA). Following four months of hard work, at the end of the summer, the teams present their final prototypes to executives in front of a stage of hundreds of attendees. The pitch matters as much as the technology does; Amplify allows teams to own their products end to end, but this means understanding it deeply enough to make others believe in its value.

Being in the 11th year of Amplify, the program evolved quite a bit, and I got to experience many new things, such as the introduction of whitepapers this year. Its notoriety makes it difficult to get into with over 10,000 applicants, and only 72 students accepted (a stat unbeknownst to me until a week into the program). Our first two weeks were spent on training in agile development as well as design thinking. Afterwards, we met with our supporting team leads and we were off to the races: booking calls, setting up meetings, and a lot of whiteboarding.

The mindset engrained in us for Amplify was not to be afraid to pivot; no team’s original solution was the one they brought to the end of the term. The first almost two months of Amplify were spent understanding the problem from many different lenses. Our challenge was to “mitigate risk in the night deposit¹ channel while maintaining operational efficiency.” One of our first questions was “what is a night deposit?” This area of business required that our team work across five separate supporting teams from product to tech, to fraud. Balancing the needs of all our stakeholders was not something I was unfamiliar with, I thought. Given full ownership of the product, no manager or supervisor could save me from the ambiguity of “how do I balance everyone’s needs?” This is a skill I wish I could distill neatly into a few paragraphs, or even a blogpost of its own. However, this is more of an art than a science; much like art, everyone has their own style, taste, and approach. I lend it all to Amplify for helping me develop this skillset, and the grueling hours mulling over how to add “wow factor” to our solution. This led us to develop ChequeMark, an AI tool at RBC, to detect patterns in fraud, giving a risk score to business clients based on their behaviour and history with RBC. More can be read about our ML model in our whitepaper, kudos to our data engineer.

The end of Amplify culminates in AmpExpo² , where each of the 19 participating teams hard work is brought to stage. Preliminary pitches determine the finalists, and all of those who don’t make the finals get booths to demo and conversate with all attendees between the rounds of the final pitches if not selected as a finalist. While our team did not make the top six finalists, we perfected our pitch and could walk away satisfied, nonetheless. Even teams who don’t win still often get their projects adopted by their respective supporting teams to help initiatives at RBC. Despite not making the finals, we were able to identify areas our solution could increase efficiency, projected to save $14 million over the next five years.

Learnings

There’s numerous things I’ve learned through the Amplify program, but three important things to me are: balancing the needs of different stakeholders, communicating with a team, and ownership over your decisions and actions. As mentioned before, dealing with the wants of varying stakeholders is more of an art than a science, but the others feel more concrete, maybe even formulaic. Working with a team where everyone is equal lends itself to many responsibilities, one of which is being transparent in your communication of your progress, roadblocks, and wins. Most importantly, Amplify changed how I think about ownership. When there is no obvious answer, ownership means helping the team make a decision, committing to it, and taking responsibility for the outcome. Unbeknownst to me, these lessons were also reflected in my personal life and success. Taking ownership has made me more honest with myself, an important inflection point in my life that I can recognize right now as changing the trajectory of my future. In all, Amplify has changed the way I approach balancing others’ needs, communicating with a team, and most importantly to take ownership of my actions and decisions.

Job Description

The role of “Developer” at RBC Amplify is fluid, as are all roles in Amplify. Each challenge in the program is so distinct that it can mean a developer on one team is architecting a system, while the other is doing user interviews to improve their UX. Ultimately the role is shaped by each team, and the challenge they are given. Moreover, depending on circumstances, teams are able to choose their tech stack, while others inherit it from their supporting team. No one technology or description can be picked out to describe the role of a developer in this program, flexibility is crucial.

Conclusions

From the inception of our idea to the pitch at the end, Amplify offers ownership in a way few get at the intern level. Getting the opportunity to own a product end to end has shaped me in more ways than I can count, and I’m so grateful I got the chance to be a part of this program. Starting over ten years ago, Amplify has become a coveted program with thousands of applicants that gives students the opportunity to solve real problems at RBC. With real world problems come real world ambiguity, Amplify taught me to embrace this uncertainty and not fear pivoting. As a developer at Amplify, I took away so many valuable skills, communication, balancing stakeholder wants, and ownership. I’m so grateful I got the opportunity to experience this program, and even more grateful for how much I got to learn from the much smarter people around me.

Acknowledgements

A very special shoutout to my team, ChequeMark (William Lam, Ann Xu, Emily Yu), for teaching me so much over the course of these four months. I am grateful to have worked alongside all of you. I learned so much about teamwork, system architecture, and communication. This summer also unearthed some weaknesses I never knew I had; and facing them hasn’t been easy, but your patience for this did not go unnoticed. I wish each of you the best of luck in your futures, it really was a pleasure, and I would not have it any other way.

Appendix

1. Night deposit

   A night deposit is a secure chute that lets business clients with a special key deposit cash and cheques outside of regular branch hours. An armoured courier then takes the bags to a facility where the contents are processed. Each deposit contains a night deposit slip detailing the contents of the bag.

2. AmpExpo

   AmpExpo is the final showcase of the RBC Amplify program, where teams present their projects to RBC employees, leaders, and other attendees through pitches and interactive booths. The finalists are the top six teams selected based on multiple criteria to present on stage in front executives, with a break halfway through to allow for networking and booth demos.