Read the full story here.

Finance is swooshing into blockchain, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Each organization is adopting new ways of serving clients faster than the other. Or are they? Is this the actual reality we live in?

While the challengers have nothing but upside, existing institutions find themselves in a swamp of technology black boxes they have to grapple with and loath the idea of marrying yet another complicated technology octopus that will just not let go in decades. That might seem like an exaggeration, but go through an institutional procurement process or a dozen, and the reality will be quite apparent.

On one side, you have technology adoption being faster than ever before. FinTech challengers are indeed coming and fast. Established companies are launching their own robo-advisors (ex: JPMorgan’s recent plans for an ‘automated advisor’) and lending mobile apps. At the same time, established companies are still trying to overhaul systems from decades ago in an effort to find new competitiveness. Systems that are incredibly critical serving large client segments and interconnected across service lines. Where do these two trends clash?

Find out more here.

It’s no secret that technology that serves millions of people today in finance is legacy. It’s often poorly documented, misunderstood and poses a systemic risk. However, overhauling it is also no easy task and oftentimes it gets surrounded by a lot of red tape in bold letters stating “DO NOT TOUCH” given the inter-dependencies legacy systems will have due to the way they were built (giant monolith applications — the “API Economy” wasn’t invented yet!).

Why would you even want to connect systems?

I’ve been asked countless times, “How do you connect to our systems?” and my answer is always the same, “Do you actually want to?” Oftentimes, in new greenfield projects, isolation is your friend. Proving out a new business line or technology in a smaller segment in its own stack can be far more nimble and easy to roll out. Based on validated data and use, it’s then easier to justify integration into other technology stacks on a basis of broader deployment and actual usage need. New business lines are exactly that, new and with that newness, comes the choice of design.

Continue reading here.

MEDICI

Written by

MEDICI

MEDICI accelerates global impact for all members of the FinTech ecosystem through memberships, research, advisory, and insights.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade