Fiserv's Core Pivot with Steve Wildman

Hey, GonzoBankers. Tony DeSanctis back with another hot take. Lots of things happening in the technology space, core specifically. There have been a lot of shifts and disruptions, so I asked Steve Wildman to join us to talk a little bit about some of the things that are going on in the space.

Steve, I know Fiserv just came out with an announcement around some core consolidation. Tell us a little bit about why that happened and what they’re doing.

Yeah. So Fiserv had six primary cores that were servicing the bank market, and what they’ve done is they’re taking three of them, which had, I think, a total of 1,500 clients. The largest segment of those was Premier, which is about 900 banks, so it’s pretty significant.

They’re merging those three into one product, and they’re actually making it real time, doing a lot of other needed enhancements and improving the UX. So it’s a good move operationally.

Yeah.

The question is, are they doing this to freeze the market, meaning stop the runoff? Because there have been a lot of clients that have gone to Jack Henry, to FIS and, most significantly, which was surprising to me, CSI.

So are they just trying to freeze and stem the flow, or is this going to be something transformational? Their competitors have their own modernization strategies, which are more leapfrog-type things, going to cloud-native architecture.

Okay. And this seems to be a little bit more of a step.

Step, yeah. Exactly.

So Fiserv has been losing market share. They’ve come up with a strategy to try to consolidate some of the existing solutions, but it’s more of a stair-stepped approach. Some of their competitors have sort of leapfrogged into a cloud-native solution and are more dynamic.

So the question is, will this adjustment or this enhancement stem the tide of the lost market share? And candidly, just given Fiserv’s priorities right now, is it at the top of their priority list given all their merchant work?

Right. Well, if I could add one more thing, there’s still going to be some confusion in the market because they will still have DNA being actively sold. They’ve got clients that are on Signature, and then, of course, Finxact, which is Fiserv’s cloud-native solution.

Right.

How does that all fit together is going to be the question.

So, lots of big things coming. Unclear where it’s all going to end up. If you guys have questions about your core or are thinking about the core, let us know in the comments what you’re doing. We’ll get you in touch with Steve and see if you can figure it out.