By Brendan Deakin, General Manager, U.S. Market, Provenir
Today’s technology can be not only a vital enabler to progress and growth, but also a potential hindrance to efficiency. With the accumulation of outdated, redundant, or overly complex tech systems, larger financial institutions, including major banks, can feel the pressures of “tech bloat”.
Tech bloat in financial services refers to the excessive accumulation of outdated, redundant, or highly complex tech systems that weigh down an organization, and it is becoming increasingly common. This phenomenon stems from a variety of causes, but the biggest culprit is often an abundance of legacy systems that have been patched and repurposed over the years.
The challenge is that many financial services providers require very specific needs to be addressed, including everything ranging from core banking systems and risk assessment models, to cybersecurity software, workflow automation, and customer relationship management, among others. As the list of needs and related technology grows with a bank, so does the bloat.
Tech bloat hampers operational efficiency, escalates costs, and stifles innovation – which makes it a critical issue to address. For larger banks in particular, the urgency to streamline tech infrastructure has never been greater. With an increasingly competitive (and much more highly regulated) environment for financial services providers, eliminating tech bloat is essential not only to support operational efficiency, but also to improve security and agility.
How Tech Bloat Weighs Down Financial Services
Many of the software solutions financial institutions have will overlap in functionality, leading to cost and operational inefficiencies. One survey found that 54% of IT professionals say their organization pays for software that never gets used.
Often these systems are not integrated, creating numerous silos of information, complicating workflows, and making data access tricky. Extensive customizations and add-ons over the years can quickly turn into burdens, limiting flexibility and making maintenance and updates difficult.
Regular updates – often the result of organizations trying to keep pace with constant regulatory shifts – can result in a quickly tangled web of temporary fixes that add more bloat. This can also position a bank to be more vulnerable to everything from data breaches to compliance lapses.
Consequences of Tech Bloat
Tech bloat has a significant impact on day-to-day operations, and these effects are compounded the longer the bloat exists.
- Budget Implications: Outdated systems tend to consume a disproportionate share of budgets, diverting necessary funds away from more strategic, growth-focused investments, and hampering investment in more innovative, efficient solutions.
- Operational Inefficiency: A bloated tech environment slows down business processes and complicates workflows, with legacy systems and overlapping solutions creating bottlenecks. This inefficiency affects day-to-day operations, but also has a compounding effect the longer it continues, leading to longer turnaround times and a lack of flexibility and agility in a bank’s operations, ultimately adding friction to customer experiences.
- Risk and Compliance Challenges: The more outdated systems a bank has to manage, the more risk of errors, data inconsistencies, and compliance adherence gaps. All financial services providers must follow stringent regulatory requirements, and the more bloated the organization, the more challenging it is to ensure compliance – leading to potential fines and reputational damage.
- Security Vulnerabilities: The complexity of a bloated tech environment makes it more difficult to implement robust security measures effectively, leaving a bank open to targeting by cybercriminals. Any breach (data, compliance, ransomware) can have severe consequences, including financial losses and significant damage to customer trust.
- Innovation Roadblocks: Maintaining and integrating multiple tech systems makes it extremely challenging to adopt new technologies. In an industry where agility, flexibility, and continuous innovation are required to stay competitive, this barrier to tech advancement places larger, more complex financial services organizations at a distinct disadvantage – making it difficult to explore new opportunities and deliver impactful solutions to their customers.
Key Strategies for Winning the War on Tech Bloat
Banks should evaluate these strategies to streamline operations and slim down their tech stack:
- Conduct a Technology Audit: Thoroughly review all existing systems to pinpoint which ones are outdated, redundant, or no longer serve a critical function. Also evaluate how well current systems integrate and communicate with each other, identifying gaps and inefficiencies.
- Streamline and Consolidate: Determine which systems are essential for core operations and focus on maintaining and enhancing those first. Gradually eliminate or replace systems that are no longer necessary or that duplicate functionality
- Invest in Modern, Integrated Solutions: Leverage cloud technology to improve scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, and invest in solutions that can easily integrate with existing systems and scale as the bank grows.
- Enhance Data Management and Governance: Consolidate data into centralized repositories to ensure consistency, accessibility, and security. Establish strong data governance practices to manage data quality, privacy, and compliance.
- Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement: Promote a mindset that embraces new technologies and innovative solutions. Continuously assess and update a technology strategy that aligns with evolving business needs and tech advancements in the industry
Adopt an Agile Mindset to Maintain a Healthy Banking Operation
With a slimmed down tech stack, banks need to ensure tech bloat doesn’t return with a vengeance. Agile methodologies are crucial, as they promote flexibility in technology development and deployment, allowing banks to adapt quickly to changing consumer/industry needs and emerging industry trends. Agile methods encourage iterative improvements, which can help ensure that all systems remain both current and effective.
By looking towards building a sustainable technology roadmap that focuses on scalability and adaptability, banks can ensure that their tech infrastructure can grow and evolve with the organization. Prioritizing this flexibility and continuous improvement and innovation will safeguard against tech bloat and maintain a streamlined, efficient, customer-centric tech environment.
About the Author
Brendan Deakin is General Manager, U.S. Market, with Provenir,a global leader in AI-powered risk decisioning software. In this role, Brendan leads Provenir’s North Americasales, operations and customer success teams.
Brendan has more than 20 years of sales leadership experience within the consumer finance and credit services industries. Prior to joining Provenir in 2019, Brendan spent 5 years as an investor and executive with RevolutionCredit, a behavioral science-based fintech/credit scoring solution targeted for thin-file and new to credit consumers. Brendan also served as Vice President of North American Sales at Argus Information and Analytic Services (now part of TransUnion). Prior to Argus, Brendan held a variety of senior sales management roles at Experian Credit Services and Decision Analytics, including Strategic Sales and Experian Health during his 7+ years at the firm.
