Michael Field, Commercial Director Africa at 10x Banking, visited the World Financial Innovation Series in Kenya. Here's what he learned.
Over two days in February, 10x Banking joined industry leaders at the World Financial Innovation Series (WFIS) in Nairobi, a hub of Africa’s booming fintech ecosystem. Our conversations with regional banks while there echoed a more universal truth: core transformation has gone from optional to critical.
But throughout the conference, it also became clear that banking executives are still struggling to make the giant leap forward. Many are still stuck in the throes of finalising large upgrades, but are yet to see the benefits of efficiency, speed, and innovation that were the crux of the business case in the first place.
Costly, multi-year modernisation projects delivering underwhelming ROI were an all-too-common lament across the conference. Amidst mounting pressure to reduce costs, accelerate product launches, and adhere to evolving regulations, banks find themselves trapped between outdated tech and unmet promises.
Beyond the neo core compromise
Next-generation core banking platforms are crucial to breaking the impasse. Many banks have turned to neo core banking platforms as a solution, which offer incremental modernisation by running parallel to legacy systems. This approach mitigates risk by enabling phased migrations: start with a single product, prove value, then scale. It’s a pragmatic shift from the “big bang” overhauls of the past.
But there are limits to what neo cores can achieve. They’re still foundational replacements, requiring banks to rebuild processes on new architecture. While there, we discussed the potential of 10x Banking’s meta core – a completely new category of core banking designed to erase these compromises.
With the meta core, banks can bypass the multi-year slog and compromise of core replacement. Instead, they can accelerate product development, process transactions at massive scale, rely on Tier 1 standard security and resilience, and code in any language due to the meta core’s hyper-configurable architecture. All this while maintaining full code control during zero-impact upgrades. For the first time, the meta core offers bank the opportunity to transform without compromise.
Why this matters beyond tech
Hearing about the challenges and realties faced in the region around banking the underbanked gave us food for thought. Nelson Juma, CIO of I&M Group, shared fascinating insights about how financial inclusion hinges on more than apps in his presentation on “Enabling Financial Inclusion at Scale”. As important as the tech itself, he said, is providing access to affordable devices and 5G coverage in remote areas, to enable easier access to financial services.
Then there’s talent. A common gripe at WFIS was that technology vendors too often require clients to source skills (such as developers skilled in specific coding languages) from overseas, which are not only expensive to the business but also fail to contribute to local economic development and upskilling.
This echoes what we’ve been hearing more and more. Ensuring skills transfer is a vital part of 10x Banking’s relationship with our clients and was the driving force behind us developing our ‘polyglot’ extensibility feature within the meta core, which allows clients to develop code in the language of their choice.
Ensuring skills transfer is a vital part of 10x Banking’s relationship with our clients and was the driving force behind us developing our ‘polyglot’ extensibility feature within the meta core, which allows clients to develop code in the language of their choice.
Our time in Nairobi was insightful and confirmed a number of truths for us. Firstly, the level of financial innovation in East Africa is seriously impressive, especially within the microfinance and mobile space. Secondly, the large banks and incumbents there are seeing the innovation in fintech and looking to leverage innovations of their own.
From a core banking point of view, this is all very exciting. While banks are facing challenges with their legacy technology, they are also starting to see the opportunities that choosing cloud-native cores like 10x Banking’s meta core can bring. New approaches to core banking have been sorely needed for some time – and now they’re here, allowing banks and financial services to drive speed to market, reduce costs, increase revenue, and most importantly, provide their customers with better access and experiences in financial services.
