Legacy Core Systems Are Still Keeping Banks Up at Night. And for Good Reason.

A new industry analysis just confirmed what many of us in financial services already suspected: a striking number of banks are still running on core platforms built in the 1990s, and in some cases, even older.

Let that sink in for a moment.

We’re talking about infrastructure that predates the iPhone, cloud computing, and modern cybersecurity threats, systems now being asked to power real-time payments, open banking, and AI-driven financial products.

The risks aren’t theoretical. They’re structural.

When your core system hasn’t been meaningfully updated in 30+ years, three things quietly erode:

Innovation: New products take longer to build, cost more to launch, and often require painful workarounds just to function.

Compliance: Regulatory requirements evolve faster than legacy systems can adapt, creating gaps that put institutions at risk.

Cybersecurity: Outdated code is harder to patch, harder to monitor, and increasingly attractive to bad actors who know exactly where the vulnerabilities live.

The uncomfortable truth? Many banks know this. Modernization just feels riskier in the short term than staying put, until it doesn’t.

The financial institutions that will lead the next decade aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest balance sheets. They’re the ones that had the courage to modernize their foundations before a crisis forced their hand.

The clock has been ticking for a while now. The question is who’s listening.