Top 7 Core Banking Providers

The transition to digital banking is changing the way banking products and partnerships are built. In the face of fintech competition, evolving business models, and rising consumer expectations in the post-COVID environment, banks are rethinking their Core Banking Systems and technology roadmap. 

Today, banks are expected to seamlessly and reliably process real-time transactions, release new features at scale, and partner with fintechs to offer the digital products and services their customers demand. The new generation of Core Banking Systems provides the agile and resilient tech framework banks need to adapt to market dynamics and customer expectations. 

Feature Core Banking products

Digital banking is more than just mobile banking and apps. Creating a modular, composable set of applications that provides Core Banking functions and enables end-to-end digital banking capabilities for consumers remains a critical challenge. 

The top Core Banking providers are cloud-native, flexible, and scalable. Instead of an overstuffed, monolithic architecture, these Core Banking platforms run on microservices that enable lateral growth. Finally, they are API-first to enable intuitive integrations and plug-and-play partnerships. In short, Core Banking providers solve the modern digital banking challenge by:

• Preparing the technology and application infrastructure for continuous change
  Regulatory changes, globalization and changing market dynamics, and neobank challengers have put banks in a position of near-constant change. Without the luxury of time to prepare for new digital capabilities, tech teams rely on the leaner, more agile architecture top Core Banking Providers offer. 

• Delivering new banking capabilities quickly and at scale
  Off-the-shelf Core Banking Platforms can bring new banking capabilities to market faster and with less disruption, and often, lower costs. The latest generation of Core Banking Providers offers a robust development kit and APIs to fulfill new banking needs by partnering with fintechs. 

• Automating and supporting business processes
  Process automation helps banks comply with regulations, improve profits, grow revenue, and enhance the customer experience. Today’s Core Banking Providers are equipped with automated business processes. Beyond that, they also repair and streamline broken legacy processes.

It’s no wonder 70% of banks are actively reviewing their Core Banking providers. These Next-Generation Cloud-Native Core Banking products are poised to replace traditional Core Banking systems. 

The 7 top Core Banking Providers

The explosion of Core Banking products means that tech teams need clear insights into the functionality, technology, and product roadmap before buying a solution off the shelf. 

Specifically, bank tech officers should consider the following four criteria before choosing a Core Banking provider:

1. Localization – Does the provider have expertise with local regulations, accounting, language, and business?
2. Cloud – Is the solution cloud-based or cloud-native? Is there cloud integration with other ecosystem partners?
3. Architecture – How granular/modular is the software?How much does it rely on APIs to reduce the systems integration work?
4. Ecosystem – How does the software incorporate and use standards? Is there integration with the cloud ecosystem? Are there opportunities for learning and live community within the product ecosystem?

This list of top Core Banking providers attempts to provide insight and answers to the above considerations.

Skaleet

Skaleet got its start in 2011 as a mobile payment technology provider and evolved to become a global Core Banking provider. Skaleet’s cloud-agnostic Core Banking Platform is based on open, flexible, and scalable architecture. The open architecture means financial institutions can easily choose and integrate partners or develop new services and products in-house. The platform makes it easy to add, remove, test, and replace features, innovating around the way today’s consumers use technology. Because Skaleet’s Core Banking Platform is continuously deployable with low maintenance costs, it’s particularly well designed to meet the challenges of open banking. 

Skaleet puts digital technology at the forefront of banking. Over 34 financial institutions in 30 countries have deployed Skaleet’s Core Banking Platform. The Paris-based company has processed over 255 million transactions with an uptime rate of 99.99%. 

10x Banking

London-based 10x Banking is a cloud-native, modular Core Banking platform with “a mission to be the global bank operating system of choice.” Founded by Antony Jenkins, former Group CEO of Barclays, 10x supports customized products and accounting rules, localized regulatory compliance, and rapid deployment of new banking services. 

10x uses a microservices architecture and API-first design enabling banks to plug into the platform to build products cost-effectively. The platform boasts an ecosystem of over 80 global partners and a team of 500 innovators, technologists, and industry leaders. 

FiveDegrees

FiveDegrees is a fintech solutions provider based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Neo and Matrix, its Core Banking solutions, are intelligent platforms that support customer onboarding and interactions, transactions, and document processing. The cloud-native, API-first platforms are designed to connect to any legacy system to enable a full 360-degree view of the customer for better personalization. 

Matrix and Neo are automated Core Banking platforms that can support any segment, product, or channel via a mid-office environment. FiveDegrees is recognized by customers for its project management services; the company’s technical staff offers training and support throughout the entire value chain. 

Mambu

Mambu’s claim to fame is as the innovator of composable banking. It boasts a large partner ecosystem that enables customers to create differentiated financial offerings with ease. Cloud-native with a transparent SaaS model, Mambu powers growth without heavy upfront investments or vendor lock-in. It also uses a low-code process, single code base, and publicly available APIs to permit continuous iteration without disruption. 

Berlin-based Mambu was founded in 2011, and in the decade since its launch, it has attracted over 230 global customers with some 73 million end users in 65 countries. Its Core Banking muscle extends into multiple verticals including banks, neobanks, SME and mortgage lending, fintech, telcos, and e-commerce.  

Ohpen

Ohpen is a cloud-native Core Banking platform that supports savings, investments, mortgages, and loans. It uses flexible API and configuration settings to customize front-end services to meet evolving consumer needs; Ohpen calls this the “Customization by Configuration” principle. 

Ohpen stands out for its commitment to continuous compliance, which is included in the pricing. Since compliance can eat up between 40% and 50% of a bank’s IT budget, this represents a considerable benefit. Ohpen was the first company to bring Core Banking to the cloud. It’s headquartered in Amsterdam with offices in London, Antwerp, Barcelona, Bratislava, and Zilina. 

Thought Machine

Thought Machine is a London-based financial technology company known for its Vault Core Banking platform. Vault can replicate or create back book products like savings, loans, and mortgages, as well as launch new credit products not usually managed from the core. The Product Library includes over 200 preconfigured financial products that can be rapidly deployed or customized. Vault is available as a SaaS solution, or it can be deployed as a public, private, or hybrid solution. 

New products are created using a system of smart contracts in the Vault’s configuration layer. The API-driven architecture gives banks the power to build any stack they want using real-time data. 

Tuum

Tuum is one of the newest entrants in modular Core Banking. Originally founded in 2019 as Modularbank in Estonia, the company changed its name to Tuum (or ‘core’ in Estonian) to better represent its product and mission. The Tuum Core Banking platform offers functional modules such as credit cards or e-wallets, that can be coupled and combined to meet the needs of the organization’s customers to turbocharge growth. Tuum is API-first and built on a microservices architecture. 

Tuum offers embedded finance use cases, an innovative feature that makes the platform attractive to customers in non-financial industries such as retail.