How to Ensure Your Core Technology Is Future-Ready

Leverage a modernized core ecosystem to provide speed, convenience and hyper-personalization

The financial services industry is constantly changing, but it is the accelerated pace of change that is most challenging to financial institutions. Heightened consumer engagement is now at the center of everything – digital engagement, to be sure, but also using direct contact in the branch to build and intensify the customer relationship in new ways. 

And the name of the game continues to be speed, ease, convenience (through omnichannel service) and – perhaps most important – hyper-personalization.

Consumers want a banking experience that looks like them, that aligns exactly with their needs. Financial institutions must demonstrate that they know their customers/members so well, and anticipate their needs so clearly, that the institution becomes an indispensable part of their financial lives.

As your financial institution attempts to navigate this changing environment, consider these questions:

• Is your core account processing system currently part of a broader financial services ecosystem that delivers capabilities that enable you to effectively compete?
• Can you easily integrate your choice of third-party fintech solutions with your account processing system, using open APIs to provide differentiated experiences and gain speed-to-market advantages?
• Does your account processing system enable real-time processing that supports payments, alerts and analytics?

Without the table-stakes functionality described above, your financial institution could be at a competitive disadvantage. By tapping into a modern ecosystem, one that leverages the proven foundation of your existing core platform but allows you to add new layers of capability, you will satisfy your customers/members and differentiate your institution.

The first step

So, your first task in gaining a competitive advantage is putting the right technology in place – future-ready technology that accelerates and elevates your ability to respond to change, facilitates engagement and growth, and perhaps even helps you get ahead of what’s next. Fintech partnerships can be an important part of the mix. 

With the right technology – solutions that easily integrate in real time with third-party innovations through open APIs – your financial institution can provide in-demand services (in account opening, loan applications and payments, for example), to keep consumers happy and data secure.

A new way of thinking

The good news here is that you may not have to replace your current core at all. Sure, you may choose to modernize and upgrade an older system to an attractive alternative at some point, when it makes sense for your organization. But your current core functionality may be operating just fine; it can still do the heavy lifting. It’s what happens around that core foundation that will change the processing and money movement paradigm going forward. There is much that can be accomplished by reorganizing how your existing core and its ancillary programs relate – and adding new, cutting-edge solutions as needed.

Fiserv supports innovation

Fiserv is continually developing new tools that enable our financial institution clients to deploy future-ready technology within a modern ecosystem built on the foundation of their core platform. Below are examples. 

Finxact

Fiserv offers Finxact, a next-generation financial services platform for the business of banking, fintech and embedded finance. It’s tailor-made for the ecosystem arrangement we’re describing. Finxact can co-exist with your current core to enable innovation and growth. 

The diagram below illustrates how this ecosystem can work.