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Upstarts Covet Your Core THEY CLAIM SWITCHING IS DIFFICULT, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE
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or years, community banks have complained that their core banking technology is being held hostage by the oligopoly held by the Big Four providers – FIS, Fiserv, Jack Henry and Finastra – which they say have failed to update their platforms despite charging high fees and exorbitant contract breakup fees. Now a group of financial technology startups is trying to gain what small market share is left to them by the Big Four, which many in the industry say hold a market share of well over 90% between them. This small group of upstarts includes St. Louisbased Neocova, which has raised about $3 million in capital from community banks, including The Provident Bank in Amesbury, Mass., and Finxact, which last year raised $30 million in funding from the American Bankers Association and a group of banks. But the leader of this small pack of fintechs may be five-year-old NYMBUS, which according to president David Mitchell has helped 12 banks go live with its core banking solution over the past two years – 10 of
14 | Banking New York | Issue Three 2020
Photo credt: Getty Images
them in 2019 – with another 15 scheduled for this year. According to its website, “financial institutions are having a hard time meeting customer demand due to their dependency on legacy technology solutions that were built to serve a brick and mortar banking model.” David Mitchell NYMBUS’s SmartCore “is a digital-first technology platform that enables financial institutions to offer a customercentric banking experience. The platform unifies all the required banking functions into one system, enabling an omnichannel customer experience with automation and simplification of back-end processes and workflows.” “The core is one of the biggest problems that this industry has,” Mitchell says, echoing comments from many others in the community banking industry. “If a banking customer needs support, it will take
