Run vs Change the Bank Baselining for Portfolio Governance

At a Glance

Treat Run vs Change the Bank as a governance baseline: define rules, map spend and capacity, expose technical debt, require run-impact/decommission plans, and track RTB/CTB metrics so change reduces long-term run cost and risk.

Why RTB vs CTB is a baseline, not a budgeting label

Run the Bank (RTB) versus Change the Bank (CTB) is often treated as a finance taxonomy. In transformation governance, it is more useful as a baseline discipline: a fixed reference point for how the institution allocates capacity and spend between operational continuity and strategic change, and how that allocation shifts as the portfolio evolves.

Executives rely on the RTB/CTB baseline to answer questions that standard portfolio dashboards frequently obscure: Which costs are genuinely discretionary? Where is technical debt consuming change capacity? Which programs are increasing future run-cost? And where are risk, resilience, and regulatory obligations forcing reallocation away from growth investment?

The core baseline split and what it must include

An effective RTB/CTB baseline segments the bank’s total technology and change capacity into two pillars, but it also makes the boundary conditions explicit. The governance objective is comparability across functions and time, so leadership can see whether changes in spend represent strategy, risk response, or uncontrolled drift.

Run the Bank (RTB)

RTB covers business-as-usual costs required to sustain current operations: platform and infrastructure upkeep, transaction processing, service management, customer support, security operations, regulatory compliance activities embedded in BAU, and remediation work required to keep services within risk appetite. In many traditional institutions, RTB has historically consumed the majority of technology spend, reflecting complex legacy estates and high operational demands.

• Service stability and uptime commitments, including resilience controls and recovery readiness
• Regulatory and audit obligations that operate continuously (e.g., access management, logging, surveillance, evidence retention)

Change the Bank (CTB)

CTB represents forward investment aimed at transformation and innovation: new product capabilities, platform modernization, data and analytics uplift, automation, and strategic growth initiatives. CTB is also where implementation risk concentrates—dependency risk, delivery execution risk, and the risk that benefits assumptions are not realized or cannot be evidenced.

• Strategic transformation programs and product roadmaps
• Regulatory-driven change initiatives that reshape processes and controls
• Foundational investments (data, identity, API platforms) that enable re-use across the portfolio

Establishing a defensible RTB/CTB baseline

RTB/CTB baselining breaks down when the organization lacks consistent definitions, when shared services are not allocated transparently, or when CTB work silently becomes permanent RTB cost. A defensible baseline therefore requires explicit rules, repeatable allocation mechanics, and change-control discipline.

1) Metric definition that withstands scrutiny

Executives should define RTB and CTB in a way that is meaningful to governance forums and auditable over time. “Keeping the lights on” versus “alpha-driving” is a useful shorthand, but the baseline must clarify ambiguous categories such as security uplift, regulatory remediation, cloud migration, and operational tooling that may have both run and change characteristics.

• Define decision rules for ambiguous work (e.g., modernization that reduces run-cost vs modernization that increases operating complexity)
• Set thresholds for capitalized versus expensed change and how that maps to RTB/CTB reporting
• Align definitions to portfolio stage gates so work is categorized consistently from approval through delivery

2) Resource mapping to expose capacity constraints and technical debt

Baselining requires allocation of both financial spend and capacity. Mapping FTEs and platform costs to RTB/CTB clarifies where the bank is constrained and where investment is being absorbed by maintenance. The goal is not perfect precision. The goal is decision-grade visibility into what is actually consuming scarce skills such as cloud engineering, cyber architecture, data engineering, testing, and release management.

• Map key run-cost drivers (incidents, change failure, manual operations) to the services and platforms that generate them
• Make shared services transparent (e.g., security, risk, data governance) to prevent hidden CTB taxation

3) Governance controls to prevent CTB from becoming permanent RTB

A common governance failure is “run-cost accretion”: CTB delivers new capabilities that increase operating complexity without a corresponding reduction in legacy run-cost. Preventing this requires that every material CTB investment is accompanied by an explicit run-impact hypothesis, including what will be decommissioned, what operating model will change, and what control burden will shift.

• Require run-impact statements and decommission plans as part of approval and release governance
• Track RTB deltas post go-live (incidents, staffing, vendor cost, control testing burden) as formal benefits evidence
• Use change control to separate approved scope expansion from uncontrolled operationalization of “extras”

4) Strategic rebalancing using automation, SRE, and AI

Leading institutions attempt to reduce RTB by industrializing reliability and automating recurring operational work. Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices can reduce toil and improve stability through standardization, error budgets, and automated remediation. Applied carefully, AI can accelerate detection, triage, and control evidence production. The executive focus should remain on whether these levers produce sustained RTB reduction without weakening risk posture.

How RTB and CTB differ in performance signals and risk

Executives should govern RTB and CTB with different performance signals. RTB is not “less strategic”; it is the foundation for customer trust, compliance, and resilience. CTB is not “more valuable” by default; it must prove delivery and value realization under implementation risk and dependency constraints.

Metric	Run the Bank (RTB)	Change the Bank (CTB)
Primary goal	Stability, uptime, compliance, resilience	Innovation, growth, capability uplift
Typical spend pattern	Often the majority in legacy-heavy estates	Typically smaller but targeted; increasing in digital competition
Measurement focus	Efficiency, service health, cost control, control effectiveness	Delivery predictability, outcomes realization, unit economics over time
Risk focus	Operational continuity, cyber risk, control breakdown, third-party disruption	Implementation risk, dependency risk, change saturation, value leakage

Portfolio and initiative baselining decisions enabled by RTB/CTB

The RTB/CTB baseline becomes operationally useful when it is connected to portfolio governance decisions: sequencing, funding reallocation, scope control, and decommission commitments. This is especially important when major modernization programs run alongside heightened compliance and resilience demands, because the portfolio can otherwise accumulate irreversible run-cost and delivery risk.

Executives should use the baseline to enforce three portfolio behaviors: (1) protect critical RTB capabilities that sustain resilience and compliance, (2) prioritize CTB initiatives that reduce long-term run-cost and control burden, and (3) stop or re-scope CTB work that expands the operating footprint without credible decommission or simplification commitments.

Strengthening the RTB/CTB baseline with maturity evidence for transformation governance

RTB/CTB baselining is only as credible as the institution’s ability to evidence capacity, control strength, and operational constraints. Maturity evidence helps leadership test whether the run-cost base is driven by avoidable toil or by necessary resilience and regulatory requirements, and whether CTB delivery capability is strong enough to execute the rebalancing plan without increasing operational risk.

Assessing dimensions such as governance effectiveness, delivery execution, architecture and data readiness, risk and control integration, and operational resilience supports better sequencing decisions and more realistic funding shifts. Used in that way, the DUNNIXER Digital Maturity Assessment can help executives validate whether RTB reduction initiatives (automation, SRE, simplification) are feasible within current constraints and whether CTB investments will translate into measurable run-cost and control-burden outcomes over time.

References

• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/aligning-value-mix-integrating-run-bank-change-concepts-emile-vos-mmepf#:~:text=Introduction:%20In%20the%20realm%20of,involves%20transformative%20projects%20and%20innovation.
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