Why the challenge of legacy systems must be addressed in 2020

The finance sector needs to embrace partnerships to cost effectively update its legacy systems and infrastructures to meet the future demands of consumers and businesses, industry experts warn.

The comments follow industry analysis from GlobalData, which asked a range of experts about key finance trends for 2020.

Chris Kronenthal, president and chief technology officer at payment platform FreedomPay, said: “Businesses of all sizes need to assess their entire end-to-end technology platforms if they want to stay ahead. We are not talking about ripping and replacing digital infrastructure as the cost would be monumental, if not entirely impossible, but surround and expanding legacy systems to stay competitive.”

Elliott Limb, chief customer officer of cloud-based lending platform Mambu said: “Working as a collaborative ecosystem that drives innovation quickly and has a customer-centric focus is the only way for banks to win. Over the next few years, these solutions will become the central process of the bank, removing the legacy and on-premise monolithic technology stacks and related business architectures with an agile, fit for purpose and composable solution that is adaptable to future business needs.”

Adrian Cannon, chief executive officer of global technology company Omnio, added: “Non-banking players are set to increasingly extend their product set into the financial services sector, challenging the big banks to raise their game quickly. Provided these long-time banking giants can change their legacy platforms quickly enough and have the ambition to do so, they may be able to respond in time.”

This view was supported by Ian Bradbury, chief technology officer, financial services, at Fujitsu. He said: “As banks continue to focus on modernising their services, we will see a dramatic rise in outsourcing when it comes to the management of legacy systems. Much like the moves we’ve seen in the insurance industry over the past few years, banking will become less about legacy tech, and more about building new cloud systems that allow for innovation and new digital solutions for customers.”

GlobalData is a global intelligence provider to some of the world’s largest industries.

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