That's the view from the bankers' boats. Beneath this roiling sea is a vendor community that's in a flux all its own. Fidelity National's acquisition of Metavante was driven in no small part by FIS Chairman Lee Kennedy's constant check of his rear view mirror, with fears that Oracle and IBM were gaining in their efforts to make a play for his customer base. Kennedy said so explicitly, and the acquisitions and partnerships announced by enterprise rivals like Microsoft, IBM and Oracle in the intervening months have proved him right.
"The increased focus on financial industry technology suggests that the long expected wave of core platform transformation in the U.S. could happen," says Steven Reiter, a senior executive and banking technology lead at Accenture. "The banking industry drivers are consolidation and the entrance of foreign players and non-traditional competitors, increased customer servicing demands, high IT development and maintenance costs, the need for greater product flexibility, and impending regulatory changes."
To be sure, a $2 billion community bank in Paducah will remain the sweet spot for incumbent fintech vendors; it's tough to imagine any of the enterprise players having the desire, or ability, to handle the complexity that comes with serving the masses of the U.S. banking market. But with both the banking and vendor seas turbid with change, it's impossible to predict how the forces of competition, regulation and consumer desires will reshape the market in the coming years. One thing's for sure says Fiserv CEO Jeff Yabuki, "I don't think you can prudently ignore companies that have the bandwidth and resources such as an IBM or Oracle or HP or Microsoft."
Neither do we. Here's a look at what IBM, Microsoft and Oracle have been up to in the past year or two, and what it means for U.S. banks.
