Branch Automation Solutions for Large Banks: A Comparison Among Global Core Banking System Vendors

Core banking system vendors are now offering highly competitive branch automation suites, but large banks have been slow to catch on.

The compelling feature of core system “front ends” used to be the preintegration to the core. Now many solutions from core banking system vendors are highly competitive. However, despite the advancements in branch automation solutions from core providers, many large banks still run homegrown or third party branch automation systems—usually old ones, with an average age of five years or older. Large banks are more likely to run old code than midsize banks.

Many banks are investing in multichannel sales and service solutions without upgrading core banking systems. In a new report, Branch Automation Solutions for Large Banks: A Comparison Among Global Core Banking System Providers, Celent compares the range of solutions primarily available to large banks, those whose weighted average asset size of customers is more than $20 billion. Celent has created a map of core banking vendors catering to large banks around the world. The report ranks these vendors using Celent’s ABCD Vendor View. Vendors covered in this report include: Accenture Alnova, FIS, Infosys, and Oracle.

“The historic notion that core banking system providers couldn’t compete head-to-head with specialized branch automation solution vendors is no longer supportable,” says Bob Meara, Senior Analyst with Celent’s Banking Group and author of the report. “Once ‘hardwired’ to core systems, these branch automation solutions are now designed to integrate with competitive cores using open standards. The trend is to sell them separately so sales are not tied to core system replacements alone.”