This article is based on insights from an in-person, closed-door executive panel held in Bangkok, Thailand, where senior leaders from banking, fintech, and technology came together to discuss what “next-generation banking” really means in practice.
Moderated by Michael Araneta, Lead, Banking GTM in Southeast Asia at AWS, the discussion brought together perspectives from audax, 10x Banking, GFT Technologies, and Ascend Money. Rather than focusing on theory or hype, the conversation centered on lived experience, from operating modern platforms at scale to modernizing legacy institutions without breaking them.
Next-generation banking is one of the most used, and least clearly defined, phrases in financial services. Is it cloud? AI? Digital only? Better apps?
From the discussion, one message stood out clearly: next-generation banking is not a destination. It is a continuous capability.
A next-generation bank is one that can evolve quickly: technically, commercially, and culturally. Building a platform once and standing still is a fast path to irrelevance. Decisions made today may no longer be right in 18 months. That is why long, five year transformation roadmaps often fail before they finish.
The goal is not a one-off transformation. The goal is continuous evolution.
“For me, a next-generation bank is a bank that can evolve and change quick. Building something once and letting it look at a nice shiny platform that doesn’t evolve is just going to be something that becomes irrelevant very, very quickly.” Mike Breen, Chief Commercial Officer, audax.
From a technology perspective, next-generation banks share a set of core principles: cloud-native architectures, API-first design, event driven systems, and microservices. These foundations allow banks to release changes frequently, scale elastically, and modernize components independently without system wide disruption.
“Change isn’t a bad word. It isn’t a word to be feared. It’s actually something to be embraced because the market is changing.” Lewis Ide, Senior Vice President APAC, 10x Banking.
Technology alone is not enough. The real challenge is cultural. Banks must assume constant change, embrace experimentation, and view transformation as ongoing rather than finite. Culture should shape technology decisions, not the other way around.
“If we don’t adhere to the mindset that we can continue to change the bank, we will become legacy one day.” Staporn Kiewsuwansuk, Chief Technology Officer, Ascend Money.
“70% of the top tier one banks in the world are sitting in mainframe, and they have zero plans to change.” Antonio Camacho Hubner, APAC & GCC Head of New Business and Head of Banking & Financial Services, GFT.
Incumbent banks often struggle to change because they remain profitable. When systems work and balance sheets are strong, incentives favor stability over innovation. Banks now spend the majority of their technology budgets on simply keeping the lights on. In many cases, maintenance accounts for 70% or more of IT spend. Customer loyalty further reduces urgency, as most consumers rarely switch their primary bank even when experiences are sub optimal.
“It’s an excess of loyalty.” Antonio Camacho Hubner, APAC & GCC Head of New Business and Head of Banking & Financial Services, GFT.
Digital-first institutions show what is possible when adaptability is built in from day one. Operating with thousands of deployments per year, live daytime releases, centralized data platforms, and strong internal ownership of customer facing systems allows teams to innovate without sacrificing reliability or compliance.
“The best thing that has happened in financial services in the last ten years is that we started thinking in customer journeys and see the consequences in technology.” Antonio Camacho Hubner, APAC & GCC Head of New Business and Head of Banking & Financial Services, GFT.
Key architectural principles consistently emerged: microservices, composable platforms, centralized real-time data, automated testing and deployment pipelines, and open APIs. Together these create environments where change is safe, fast, and reversible.
A recurring theme in the discussion was that next-generation banking does not always mean starting from scratch. For many incumbent institutions, coexistence is not a compromise, it is a necessity.
Banks must continue to operate mission critical systems while introducing modern, cloud-native capabilities alongside them. As Mike from audax described it, this is like performing “brain surgery and open heart surgery at the same time.” The challenge is not just technical, but organizational: how to modernize without disrupting customers, regulators, or the balance sheet.
Rather than replacing everything at once, next-generation architectures allow banks to coexist with legacy cores, progressively decoupling experiences, products, and services from monolithic systems. This approach reduces risk, enables faster innovation at the edge, and avoids the cost and danger of big bang transformations.
Crucially, coexistence reframes modernization as an ongoing process, not a single event. It allows banks to evolve continuously, retiring legacy components when the business case is right, not when timelines force it.
“There's no one answer. It's all down to the bank, the urgency, the risk appetite and the budget.” Mike Breen, Chief Commercial Officer, audax.
Next-generation banking is not about rebuilding banks once. It is about creating banks that can rebuild themselves continuously. Institutions that stop evolving, no matter how modern they begin, inevitably become legacy.
“We probably deploy change, in our system, 3000 times a year based on the record we have. If we compare that to the traditional banks, they tend to deploy probably, once ever fortnight or once a month.” Staporn Kiewsuwansuk, Chief Technology Officer, Ascend Money.
Please reach out if you would like to discuss your journey to next-generation banking.