There is an old joke about the guy who has got lost driving in the countryside and stops to ask a pedestrian how to get to the city. The pedestrian replies: “Oh, if you want to get there, I wouldn’t start from here,” and this is exactly how banks feel today. They want to get to the nirvana of new technologies, but are stuck in a spaghetti of old systems.
Some call them legacy, others call them handcuffs, but whatever they are, it is a problem. The problem is that old systems and legacy technologies stop the bank moving forward into the nimble and agile future on offer today, and this is exactly the weakness fintech start-ups believe they can exploit.
