Outsourced IT Services for Finance

The financial services industry is among the most vulnerable to cybercrime. You’ve worked hard to earn the confidence of your members—don’t let a security breach damage that reputation. Through vulnerability testing, ongoing monitoring, and employee training, our outsourced IT services will have your network equipped to protect all confidential information.

We’ll also develop emergency planning, so in a worst-case scenario you’ll be back on track with minimal disruption.
F12 is a SOC 2 Type 2 and CyberSecure Canada certified provider with over twenty years of IT security experience. We are familiar with the ins and outs of the regulatory environment.

Our technical assessment will ensure your network security is fully compliant with provincial regulations such as FICOM, PIPEDA, PCI DSS, and PIPA.

Upgrading your IT hardware can take your business operations to the next level. But the options are often complex and prohibitively expensive.

What if you could expense your hardware instead of taking on the capital investment risk? Through our Operational Expense solution, we invest upfront in hardware, software, and labour to help keep you at the forefront without hurting your liquidity.

You may see technology as the cost of doing business, but we see it as an investment in your industry. With us providing you with outsourced IT services, we’ll continue to work with you to add technology and services so you can grow strategically. Now, when you win, we win, too.

When it comes to industry software, the options can be overwhelming. Don’t worry. Our outsourced IT services will find you a solution that is accessible, agile, and scalable. F12 supports various banking software, including CGI’s RFS Retail Banking, Fiserv DNA, Lodestar Business Intelligence, Doxim ECM, and more.

And if you already have the software you’re comfortable with, we won’t overcomplicate anything. Instead, we’ll support your existing applications while painlessly integrating new applications and tools. F12 isn’t interested in changing what you do—only in helping you do it even better.

Client

A leading provider of retail and commercial financial services with thousands of agents and hundreds of offices across Canada. Excellent, agent-delivered service and innovative online service enablement helped propel this organization to the top.

The Problem

Information technology and data centre hosting were entrusted to an outside firm. The organization’s demands grew as time passed, and the infrastructure aged. Problems began to mount. Unfortunately, reliability issues caused outages, frustrating the agents who rely on these services.

Then the situation got worse. Disaster struck, and a malicious attacker brought down services. This financial services provider decided to rethink its hosting and workload management strategy and partnerships.

F12’s Solution

F12 was brought in to assess the situation and develop an effective cloud migration strategy. F12 determined that private cloud services would provide the best security, reliability, and agility for this client’s custom workloads. Working closely with the client’s internal IS team, F12 delineated between the development environment and the production platform. F12 migrated production workloads to our boutique private cloud, which includes evergreen infrastructure, multiple layers of resiliency, and industry-leading security.

The Result

Agents and customers appreciate reliability.  The workloads in the F12 cloud have consistently exceeded five 9’s of uptime (99.999%). IT and cloud hosting have faded into the background where they belong.

F12’s solution offloaded infrastructure management and capacity planning from internal technology development teams.  They were free to focus all their time on perfecting their customer experience through superior online service enablement.

Built on a foundation of excellent business management, differentiated services, and a solid cloud migration strategy, this financial services organization surpassed 20% compound annual EBITA growth and doubled annual funded volumes.

Note: We have redacted client names from online case studies and testimonials to mitigate cyber threats from social engineering like phishing and pretexting. Contact F12 to review our client list or to connect directly with the business leaders we support. 

Are you an IT Leader? If you are, then you will likely find this eBook of interest.

The Challenge Facing IT Leaders:
Is your company struggling with high turnover and low job satisfaction? It’s time to face the challenge head-on. The truth is, most technology leaders aren’t doing a bad job – they’re simply stuck doing the wrong job. Download our complementary whitepaper on the topic to gain valuable, actionable insights.

The financial services industry is one of the most vulnerable targets for cybercrime. With our outsourced IT services, your investors will have confidence knowing their data is protected.

We’ll ensure your network and reputation are shockproof through vulnerability testing, ongoing monitoring, and employee training. And our technical assessment will confirm whether you fully comply with all government regulations like FICOM, PIPEDA, PCI DSS, and PIPA. Finally, we’ll run the evaluation and sit down with your investors to answer their most challenging due diligence questions to their satisfaction.

We can also help you make better investment decisions. Before investing in a company, we can assess its network and cyber security measures to ensure you’re not taking on more risk than necessary. It pays to have F12 on your side!

You understand the risks and benefits that come with investments. Maybe you have your eye on some potential upgrades to your IT hardware but don’t want to take on the risk of capital investment. What if you could expense your hardware? Through our Operational Expense solution, we invest upfront in hardware, software, and labour to help keep you at the forefront of IT without hurting your liquidity.

You may see technology as a cost of doing business, but we see it as a long-term investment in your industry. And as you grow your business, we’ll scale with you as needed, so you never have to worry about purchasing technology or services today that you may need tomorrow. Now, when you win, we win, too.

When choosing the right software, the options can become overwhelming. One of the many benefits of our outsourced IT services is that we take care of the complexities while you take advantage of the benefits. F12 supports a broad range of industry-standard private equity software solutions.

And if you already have something you’re comfortable with, then we won’t make you re-learn some new software. We’re here to simplify your IT, not overcomplicate it. We’ll support your existing applications while painlessly integrating new software and tools. F12 isn’t interested in changing what you do — only in helping you do it even better.

Are you an IT Leader? If you are, then you will likely find this eBook of interest.

The Challenge Facing IT Leaders:
Is your company struggling with high turnover and low job satisfaction? It’s time to face the challenge head-on. The truth is, most technology leaders aren’t doing a bad job – they’re simply stuck doing the wrong job. Download our complementary whitepaper on the topic to gain valuable, actionable insights.

With over twenty years of experience in IT security, we understand the financial services industry’s threats.

F12 was one of Canada’s first outsourced IT services to obtain SOC 2 Type 2 and CyberSecure Canada certifications. We comply with the best practices and standards for cyber defence recommended by the NIST Framework and CIS Controls. We are proud WatchGuard, Arctic Wolf Networks, ID Agent, and Microsoft partners.

We will ensure your IT system fully complies with all applicable regulations, including FICOM, PIPEDA, PCI DSS, and PIPA, and can meet any due diligence requirements.

Our technical assessment will make your IT system bulletproof.

Just like technology, the financial industry moves quickly. As a result, you must upgrade your IT hardware, but the wrong choice can be expensive.

What if you could expense your hardware instead of taking on the capital investment risk? With our Operational Expense solution, F12 makes an upfront investment of hardware, software, and labour at a fixed cost per user.

And because we value flexibility and customization, our IT solutions are scalable, allowing you to add resources during tax time and reduce your costs to normal for the remainder of the year.

You may see IT as a cost of doing business, but we see it as a long-term investment in your industry. Now, when you succeed, we succeed.

Choosing the right software can be overwhelming. With F12 handling your outsourced IT services, we’ll help you make the right choice. We have experience with various accounting packages and tax preparation software, including CaseWare, Doc.It, Sage, and more.

Whether it’s file management, collaboration, secure messaging and document transfer, or secure client access, we can help find the best fit for your unique needs. And if you already have something you’re comfortable with, then we won’t make you re-learn some new software.

We’re here to simplify your IT, not overcomplicate it. We’ll support your existing applications while seamlessly integrating new software and tools. F12 isn’t interested in changing what you do — only in helping you do it even better.

Client

A public accounting firm devoted to providing exceptional service to owner-managed businesses. They offer a full range of services, from strategy development to taxation services and corporate financing.

The Problem

Like many firms, one partner was tasked with overseeing IT decisions and the full-time responsibilities of their “real job.” Demonstrating forward-thinking, they were an early adopter of cloud computing and leveraged IT support and hosting through an IT partner. Things started well enough but deteriorated over time. Poor performance, freezing, lag, application crashes, and unresolved trouble tickets eroded the experience and confidence in their IT.

Tax season became especially painful as the surge in demand ran up against the challenges and limitations of their environment.

The partner tasked with resolving it became entangled in micro-decisions about cloud resource requirements, network infrastructure, internet services, software versions, patching, drivers, asset procurement, and lifecycle management. And every little thing came with a bill. It was death by a thousand cuts. They wanted a new relationship with IT – the noise, the distraction, and the issues to disappear.

F12’s Solution

Knowing this firm wanted a radically different approach to IT procurement, delivery, and support, F12 introduced their subscription-based IT solution, F12 Infinite. As a result, this accounting firm received a complete IT transformation for one fee per user, including new cloud hosting, backups, networking infrastructure, security, support, and strategy. They also enrolled in F12’s Device-as-a-Service offering to receive a fleet of new enterprise-grade laptops, desktops and monitors every three years.

The F12 Infinite program also included built-in improvements to the firm’s security posture, such as data encryption, zero-trust application management, Microsoft 365 backups, and audited training and phish-testing. Although this wasn’t the top issue when they selected F12, they appreciated the additional measures to keep their clients’ financial data safe and secure.

The Result

This dynamic accounting firm can now stay focused on its business clients. Technology has become more like a utility and less like a problem child. Their IT is now automatically kept up to date and is never obsolete. They have surge capacity when needed, and they never have to discuss another IT resource investment or pay for another infrastructure upgrade project.

This accounting firm appreciates counting on F12’s proactive approach rather than counting line items on its IT invoice.

Note: We have redacted client names from online case studies and testimonials to mitigate cyber threats from social engineering like phishing and pretexting. Contact F12 to review our client list or to connect directly with the business leaders we support. 

Are you an IT Leader? If you are, then you will likely find this eBook of interest.

The Challenge Facing IT Leaders:
Is your company struggling with high turnover and low job satisfaction? It’s time to face the challenge head-on. The truth is, most technology leaders aren’t doing a bad job – they’re simply stuck doing the wrong job. Download our complementary whitepaper on the topic to gain valuable, actionable insights.