The client
With over 26 million customers as of 2023, Inter is the first 100% digital bank in Brazil. Founded in 1994, the company began operating as a financial institution for a leading Brazilian construction and real estate company. This laid a robust foundation for a major turning point in 2015: the launch of an unprecedented digital-only account service in Brazil. Since 2022, Inter has expanded its operations to the United States, after migrating its shareholder base to Nasdaq and launching the Global Account for easy dollar remittances.
The first 100% cloud-based financial app in Latin America, Inter has always maintained a substantial technology and information security department, given that its entire customer interface is conducted through the app. Today, this department comprises around 1,300 people, representing more than one-third of its employees. This is also where the company’s largest investments are made.
In other words, Inter is not just a bank but also a financial SuperApp undergoing a brand repositioning. With a corporate strategy aligned with technology, it aims to reach 60 million customers with an efficiency and ROI of 30%. This vision reflects Inter’s transformation into a major tech company, where its final product is the SuperApp, designed to offer a variety of products and services beyond traditional banking, such as digital accounts, shopping, airfare, credit cards, investments, and more.
To further solidify its position as a financial SuperApp, one of Inter’s major strategic decisions was to migrate Atlassian tools to the cloud environment. This resulted in an annual saving of approximately R$ 1 million (Brazilian Real) in operational costs – an amount that translates to nearly 190 thousand dollars.
The challenge
The constant pursuit of maximum efficiency provided a solid foundation for the company to grow from 2 million customers in 2018 to the current over 30 million, a number that is expected to double in a few years. This structure faces high operational demand due to its strategic importance to the company, resulting in challenges in terms of personnel and costs. For instance, the technology development area receives about 90,000 requests annually for changes in deployment services.
One fundamental characteristic of Inter’s app structure is its component-based design, meaning it is possible to make corrections and changes to parts of the app without affecting others. Given this need, the bank considered investing in a highly customized internal structure for the digital environment. This led to the possibility of migrating these resources to the cloud, leveraging available investments and innovations.
“We started a major efficiency project last year, and the migration to Jira Cloud was mainly driven by two factors. On one hand, the efficiency brought by reducing our large data center management overhead and having better licensing management. On the other hand, the innovation aspect, being closer to the new features that Atlassian is constantly developing,” explains Carlos Pedrosa, Inter’s Technology Superintendent.
Once the decision was made, it was necessary to consider the challenges posed by migrating such a complex system with a large volume of information. The central issue was how to carry out this migration securely, within the established timeframe, without incurring impractical costs, and most importantly, without negatively impacting the experience of the 30 million customers.
To ensure a smooth transition without compromising customer experience, Inter chose e-Core as its partner for the migration to Jira Cloud.
The solutions
Inter estimates that the migration from Jira Data Center to Jira Cloud resulted in annual savings of around R$1 million, a significant figure, especially in a challenging 2023 for the financial sector in Brazil. Additionally, through the partnership with e-Core, the infrastructure team that was dedicated to managing and developing this structure could be redirected to create other products and services for the bank’s customers.
The new configuration also brought a significant gain in autonomy for the development teams, with team managers working in an integrated and coordinated manner to centralize processes and ensure alignment across different sectors. This was crucial for the processes of the various technology area squads to gain agility and collaborate more productively.
The efficiency leap resulting from the migration was a fundamental step for Inter to achieve its ambitious “60/30/30” goal: by 2027, to grow its customer base to 60 million, achieve a 30% gain in operational efficiency, and deliver a 30% ROI on capital, thereby generating increasingly sustainable gains for its stakeholders.
The Challenges
- Large data center management overhead, with high operational costs.
- High interdependence between teams and departments, with demands concentrated in a small group of administrators.
- Keeping the company up to date with industry best practices and new technologies.
- Efficient coordination of a large number of cross-functional collaborators.
- Maintaining the standard of service excellence, striving for continuous growth.
The results
- Adoption of Jira Software, Jira Service Management, and Confluence by Inter’s 1,300 IT and Information Security employees;
- Cost reduction in areas such as equipment, software, personnel, space, and licenses;
- Increased team autonomy, leading to more agile processes and overall efficiency;
- Introduction of new data management features and gaining expertise from globally recognized partners;
- Greater integration between areas through team managers and better allocation of human resources, with a stronger focus on developing projects for customers;
- Positive user experience feedback and an increasingly broad service portfolio.
“We’ve had a major efficiency project at Inter. Jira was one of the tools selected to be part of this project, and we obtained a benefit of approximately R$ 1 million with the migration to Jira Cloud. This is crucial, especially considering that 2023 was a tough year for the financial market. For growing companies in technology, every million counts.”
Carlos Pedrosa
Superintendent of Technology at Inter
Conclusion
At Inter, staying ahead in cloud service management is crucial to maintaining its position as a leader in the digital financial services market. This is an industry where competition is already fierce and only expected to grow. According to the Brazilian Fintech Association (ABFIntechs), Brazil boasts nearly 1,500 active companies identified in this sector. Additionally, our solutions have supported Inter in delivering value to its customers.
“The Inter customer expects speed of delivery, along with the quality of our services. Once Inter transformed its internal processes, we were able to address customer concerns much more swiftly. We have a 24/7 observability team, constantly monitoring screens with automated alerts, managing everything quickly—a factor that also determines the relevance of a financial institution when it comes to open finance matters,” says Christian Pinheiro, Executive Tech Manager at Inter.
Thus, Inter’s partnership with e-Core demonstrates the company’s vision to enable employees to focus on more strategic activities, contributing to gains in competitiveness and enhancing the customer experience — all of which help maintain the brand as a top-of-mind entity in its field. It shows that significant efficiency gains and cost reductions can indeed be achieved while delivering a better experience for end users, always seeking the best partners and staying aligned with the market’s leading technologies.
“We’re always striving to make our operation as efficient as possible. And e-Core, one of Atlassian’s top partners worldwide, was the partner we trusted to assist us in migrating to the cloud environment.”
Christian Pinheiro
Executive Tech Manager at Inter
