Build vs. Buy in Financial Services: Repurposed Platforms vs. Purpose-Built Archiving

Let’s consider this story: a CIO of a top global bank recently shared how their institution had just retired an aging payroll system, leaving decades of historical data behind. Instead of investing in a purpose-built archival solution, the IT team decided to get creative. Since they already had Snowflake in place for analytics, they thought, why not repurpose it to store the legacy data?

At first, it seemed like a win. No new vendors to onboard, no extra licenses to negotiate, and the IT staff appreciated how quickly the solution was up and running. The board recognized the cost savings, and the team was confident in the implementation.

But the celebration didn’t last long. When the bank’s compliance team reviewed the setup, gaps started appearing. The system couldn’t enforce immutability of records. Legal hold workflows were nowhere to be found. GDPR requirements for “right-to-preservation” and “right-to-erasure” conflicted directly with how the data was stored. What started as a cost-saving shortcut quickly turned into a regulatory exposure risk.

This isn’t a one-off story. Across financial institutions, platforms like Snowflake, Databricks, or Azure Synapse are often stretched into archiving. They may be powerful for analytics, but when it comes to compliance with its immutability, retention, legal holds, and audit-ready retrieval all are they simply fall short.

Executive Summary

Financial institutions today are being pushed harder than ever to shrink their legacy footprints, decommission outdated applications, and prove that their operations can withstand regulatory scrutiny. Faced with these pressures, many turn to familiar tools already in place, analytics and governance platforms like Databricks, Workday Prism, Snowflake, or Azure Synapse, and attempt to stretch them into archiving solutions. On the surface, this feels practical: it maximizes existing investments and sidesteps the cost of adding yet another system.

However, it is more complex. Compliance expectations have grown far beyond simple data storage or reporting. Regulators now expect immutable records, enforceable retention policies, legal hold workflows, GDPR and privacy safeguards, and resilience standards set by frameworks such as DORA, FCA/PRA, and FFIEC. These are not capabilities that analytics platforms were designed to deliver.

And when those gaps surface, the cost isn’t just inefficient, it’s heightened regulatory risk.

Why Build (Repurpose) Looks Attractive

Many companies start thinking that creating their own archive is the best choice. It can seem reasonable at a regional level, where regulations feel more contained, but on a global scale, the complexity makes it nearly impossible.

The perceived benefits usually include:

• Reuse of existing investments and licenses
• Familiarity with IT and data teams
• A sense of agility and cost savings by avoiding new systems

The Compliance Bar

Here’s where the shortcut starts to show cracks. Regulators are clear: archiving is not just about storage; it’s about provable integrity. Financial institutions must demonstrate that records are immutable, retention policies are enforced, and data can be frozen instantly when litigation or investigation looms.

• SEC 17a-4/18a-6 and FINRA 4511 (U.S. financial recordkeeping)
• GDPR (data privacy, retention minimization, right-to-preservation)
• DORA (EU operational resilience)
• FCA/PRA (UK recordkeeping and operational integrity)
• FFIEC (U.S. banking supervision)

Legal holds go beyond basic retention policies. They need to be applied quickly, across different types of data, and managed through clear, auditable processes. The moment litigation, an investigation, or a regulatory review is on the horizon, relevant records must be locked down and preserved until officially released. And this isn’t just a financial services requirement; it extends to privacy regulations like GDPR and other global compliance regimes.

Enforcement Climate

If compliance frameworks set the rules, today’s enforcement activity shows the cost of ignoring them. Since 2021, the SEC and FINRA alone have imposed more than $2 billion in penalties for recordkeeping failures. GDPR fines continue to escalate across Europe, and DORA has introduced new resilience obligations that leave no room for shortcuts. In the UK, the FCA and PRA are sharpening expectations around operational resilience and recordkeeping discipline.

The pressure is no longer theoretical. Auditors increasingly require institutions to prove that archival processes are compliance-ready across every application, not just claim that “the data exists somewhere.” Immutability, accessibility, and evidentiary retrieval are now the minimum threshold.

Historical Perspective: Database Dumps vs. Modern Platforms

For decades, financial institutions tried to achieve archival duties by exporting legacy application data into inexpensive relational databases. Relational database systems offered low-cost, easy-to-use repositories for data. Unfortunately, they were never intended for compliance.

Compliance with data management regulations requires immutability, the ability to initiate, maintain, and release legal holds, and evidentiary-grade retrieval, the bar set by regulators. At best, they approached the standards but were barely compliant.

Look at here, modern analytics and governance platforms such as Databricks, Workday Prism, Snowflake, and Azure Synapse, etc, have scale, AI-readiness, and governance that older systems could not fathom. As an archive, they again face the same challenges; regulators are not interested in analytical performance, but in measurable compliance outcomes.

Institutions now face harder requirements around retention enforcement, legal holds, privacy requirements like GDPR, operational resilience frameworks like DORA, and complicated cross-border data restrictions. In other words, technology has changed, but the fundamental compliance gap remains.

Hidden (and Ongoing) Costs

Repurposing analytics platforms for archiving tasks may appear time and money-efficient, but present some ongoing complexities that build your own archive up over time:

• SaaS vendors’ evolving connectivity models lead to API fragility
• Engineering effort required due to schema churn
• Conflicts between privacy and regulatory retention (e.g., GDPR right-to-be-forgotten).
• Compliance with legal holds is complex.
• Expenses related to investigation and discovery readiness.

Regulations like HIPAA, GDPR and other industry mandates change over time. An in-house archive must be regularly updated to stay compliant, which requires specialized expertise. Without it, organizations risk non-compliance, expensive fines, and harm to their reputation.

Scalability is another hidden cost in DIY archiving. Data volumes grow every year, and what seems sufficient today often falls short tomorrow. As storage needs expand, in-house systems struggle to keep pace, leading to performance bottlenecks, frequent upgrades, and constant re-engineering all of which drive up costs over time.

Accessibility and usability also add to the burden. While IT teams may manage to capture and store data, delivering fast, user-friendly access for clinicians, compliance officers, or auditors is a very different challenge. Without intuitive search and reliable retrieval, organizations spend more time and resources chasing records, turning what was meant to be a cost-saving measure into an ongoing expense.

Reality-Check Scenarios:

When measured against the actual compliance solicited, repurposed platforms are often ineffective:

• Regulator request for a complete, evidentiary record set
• Litigation hold requiring heterogeneous datasets to be frozen promptly
• Cross-border discovery spanning U.S., EU, and APAC jurisdictions

Tip: A data archival strategy improves the performance of essential resources in your active system. Users quickly access data archive storage devices or plans, making retrieval easier and data preservation more affordable.

Is Build (Repurpose) Aligned with Strategy?

At first, building your own archive may seem smarter, you’ll leverage existing tools and save on licensing fees.

Analytical platforms like Databricks, Workday Prism, Snowflake, and Azure Synapse are excellent for analytics, reporting, and even AI-driven insights. But when it comes to evidentiary archiving, they fall short. Regulators expect features like immutable storage, legal holds, and audit-ready capabilities these tools were never built to handle.

Let’s compare repurposed analytics platforms with purpose-built archiving.

Repurposing may look efficient at first, but Archon Data Store delivers lasting compliance, predictable costs, and true peace of mind, making purpose-built archiving the great choice.

Here’s how ADS makes it possible:

1. Compliance Isn’t Just Local Anymore

Regulatory requirements are becoming global, not only regional. Agencies like the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) are tightening recordkeeping and operational resilience standards across the Asia-Pacific.

Archon Data Store (ADS) is engineered to meet these requirements with:

• Immutable storage & WORM enforcement guarantees evidentiary integrity and tamper-proof retention.
• Granular role-based access control (RBAC) ensures only authorized users have access to specific datasets.
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA) strengthens access security across distributed environments.
• Comprehensive audit logging provides full visibility into access, changes, and retention enforcement for regulators and auditors.

2. Data Ingestion and Standardization

Archon Data Store comes with prebuilt connectors and APIs that provide flawless ingestion of data from ERP, CRM, EHR, EMR, and legacy systems. It supports structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data types and even works with more antiquated data systems without worry or interruption. A robust normalization layer ensures all ingested data works across reporting & analytics tools.

3. High-Performance Data Retrieval

Archon Data Store (ADS) enables instant access to live, legacy, and archived data through a powerful federated search capability. Metadata indexing and full-text search make it easy to find the right records. Integrated with enterprise BI and analytics platforms are SQL queries and REST APIs.

4. Enterprise-Grade Security

In enterprise-grade security, role-based access control (RBAC) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) ensure that only authorized users can access specific datasets, both at rest and in transit. Data integrity is safeguarded, governance requirements are supported, and organizations are reassured that their archived records remain secure.

5. Automation and AI-Driven Insights

Metadata is classified and enriched automatically to enhance findability and compliance. AI-driven recommendations optimize retention, access, and cost-effectiveness. Automated archiving trigger with usage analytics gives organizations the ability to manage storage optimally, and systems keep performing at peak.

6. Scalable and Cost-Optimized

Archon Data Store (ADS) is built to handle the reality of ever-growing data without forcing constant re-engineering or hidden costs. With features like compression and deduplication, it reduces the storage footprint, and its cloud-native design ensures flexibility across on-prem, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments.

Global Perspective

Regulators aren’t just tightening rules in the U.S. and Europe. Across the Asia-Pacific, authorities are following suit. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) are all strengthening requirements for recordkeeping and operational resilience, echoing global trends. The takeaway is clear: compliance archiving is no longer a regional requirement; it’s a global mandate.

Conclusion: The Way Forward on Archiving Data

Repurposing analytics platforms may be efficient. However, regulatory compliance is more than efficiency of operation. Financial institutions that fail to comply with any of the retention, immutability, or legal hold requirements expose themselves to financial, legal, and reputational risks.

Now, it’s time to rethink your approach to build versus buy and validate that your data archive is secure, compliant, and cost-effective, to give your organization certainty present and into the future. The right solution does not just allow for compliance but creates long-term business value. Platform 3 Solutions helps firms make that shift, ensuring archives are regulator-ready, globally compliant, and cost-predictable.

Ready to take your data archive to the next level? Schedule a demo today or talk to our experts now to see how Archon can future-proof your archiving data.

Ashok Kumar N

Ashok Kumar is a Senior Architect at Platform 3 Solutions, helping businesses move from outdated systems to modern, efficient data platforms. With over a decade of experience, he has built secure and scalable solutions that work across different cloud providers. He brings strong technical skills and a practical approach to solving real-world data challenges.