If your bank’s IT systems were likened to an apple, how would you view the health of your core? If you are like one of the crop, your core banking systems are degrading. You worry that the resulting odd blemish on the surface, your customer touch points, may reduce customer consumption. Worse still, you worry that your customers may pass you over for a competitor with a healthier looking apple.
Whatever your ambition, you are conscious of the need to modernise your legacy estate. Banks must face the perils of IT transformation to become dynamic. Whether or not you do this in bite-sized chunks, you’ve determined it’s probably a fruitful endeavour. It’s just that you don’t know where to begin…
In the last decade, retail banking has been characterised by fierce competition, cost saving programmes, demutualisation and consolidation. This has left banks in strong market positions with trusted brands, yet their underlying systems infrastructure is typically a tapestry of legacy applications, inflexible technologies and silos of functionality, often tied together by complex interfaces and various ‘work-arounds’, that enable old systems to perform new tricks. But competing in today’s fast moving markets demands more – as does any corporate ambition to exploit market opportunitites or new technological advantages. PA Consulting Group’s (PA) analysis of corporate strategies in the banking sector reveals a great deal of commonality, particularly in the parallel ambitions of ‘growth’ and ‘value’. Against this backdrop, key challenges facing the industry such as pan-European consolidation, increasing regulatory scrutiny, shrinking margins and shifting customer loyalty, require you to confront and reconcile the demands on your systems’ infrastructure.
At PA we believe banks can achieve both growth and value ambitions by transforming their core banking systems. Whilst the rewards for a successful transformation are immense, the change required is complex, risky and expensive. PA offers the understanding, approach, adaptability and experience to help banks prepare for, implement and realise the benefits of core systems transformation.
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