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> banking software means something written in COBOL, RPG400 etc. These languages are pretty old and hence, finding talent for these is like trying to find needl

> banking software means something written in COBOL, RPG400 etc. These languages are pretty old and hence, finding talent for these is like trying to find needle in a haystack. It's really interesting to see which of the new UK and European 'challenger' banks purchased third-party banking software and which decided to spend the time writing their own modern banking systems [1]. A few examples from the linked article... Monzo: For banking ops, it decided to build its own platform. Technology used is mainly open source: Linux, Apache Cassandra distributed database (used by the likes of Apple and Twitter), Google’s Go (golang) programming language at the back-end and PostgreSQL relational database. The system is hosted at two data centres in the UK on Mondo’s own hardware. There is a team of 16 people working on this. Atom Bank: It has created a hefty technology set-up in its run up to the launch: FIS’s Profile core banking system; FIS/Sungard’s Ambit Quantum and Ambit Focus for treasury and risk management; Iress’ Mortgage Sales & Origination (MSO) suite for mortgage business, front-to-back office; Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX for regulatory reporting; Intelligent Environments (IE) for front office capabilities; CSC’s ConfidentID system for security; Phoebus Software for secured business lending and account servicing for residential lending; and WDS Virtual Agent for customer queries supplied by WDS (a subsidiary of Xerox). Starling: The bank has an in-house developed core system. It uses GPS and Bottomline Technologies for processing and payments operations, respectively. At what point does it become cheaper to buy one of these smaller banks and migrate everyone across to their platform? [1] https://www.bankingtech.com/2018/04/uk-challenger-banks-whos-who-and-whats-their-tech/ https://www.bankingtech.com/2018/04/uk-challenger-banks-whos...

obeattie 8y ago
I’m Monzo’s Head of Engineering. A lot of the technologies mentioned above for us are accurate but some aren’t in use - notably PostgreSQL - and some others which are crucial are missing - eg. Kubernetes. The vast majority of the platform runs on AWS. Our engineering team has grown to around 60 now. Our entire backend has been built in-house using modern tech. You can read a bit more about it on our blog if you’re interested: https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-backend/ https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-bac...
- dankohn1 8y ago
  And you can see Oliver describe his experiences at Monzo next week at KubeCon Copenhagen. https://kccnceu18.sched.com/event/Dsan/keynote-anatomy-of-a-production-kubernetes-outage-oliver-beattie-head-of-engineering-monzo-bank https://kccnceu18.sched.com/event/Dsan/keynote-anatomy-of-a-...
- collyw 8y ago
  Modern doesn't necessarily mean good. AWS hasn't been without its share of problems. "Tried and tested" is something I would be looking for with banking software. Saying that TSB's stuff has just gone titsup and as far as I am aware they aren't using anything too trendy.....
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
collyw 8y ago
The majority of banking software does work and is well tested. As opposed to new stuff which will likely have some bugs to be ironed out.
Stranger43 8y ago
The real answer here is that it's proably never going to be cheaper to buy a bank with a working it platform as merging terabyte worth of actively changing data from an underdocumented 1960 noSQL database into a new greenfield product is the hard problem almost nobody have succeeded at doing without massive problems and unexpected delays and costs. In reality what happens when a bank buys another bank is that yet another middleware layer is introduced so that frontend system can access data from both of the old system not that one system is discarded while the other survive.
- shakna 8y ago
  > underdocumented 1960 noSQL database Depends on what you mean by 'undocumented'. The specsheets for the Fortran part of the stack at CommBank was 4000+ pages last I saw it. The COBOL side was 9000+. Then there were a couple million test cases for both, and a running system with no real users that got tested before production.
- tim333 8y ago
  You'd think they could copy over the limited data people actually need - account balance, direct debits, mortgage status and payments and the like over to the new system and archive all the other stuff?

obeattie 8y ago

I’m Monzo’s Head of Engineering. A lot of the technologies mentioned above for us are accurate but some aren’t in use - notably PostgreSQL - and some others which are crucial are missing - eg. Kubernetes. The vast majority of the platform runs on AWS. Our engineering team has grown to around 60 now. Our entire backend has been built in-house using modern tech. You can read a bit more about it on our blog if you’re interested: https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-backend/ https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-bac...

dankohn1 8y ago
And you can see Oliver describe his experiences at Monzo next week at KubeCon Copenhagen. https://kccnceu18.sched.com/event/Dsan/keynote-anatomy-of-a-production-kubernetes-outage-oliver-beattie-head-of-engineering-monzo-bank https://kccnceu18.sched.com/event/Dsan/keynote-anatomy-of-a-...
collyw 8y ago
Modern doesn't necessarily mean good. AWS hasn't been without its share of problems. "Tried and tested" is something I would be looking for with banking software. Saying that TSB's stuff has just gone titsup and as far as I am aware they aren't using anything too trendy.....
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

collyw 8y ago

The majority of banking software does work and is well tested. As opposed to new stuff which will likely have some bugs to be ironed out.

Stranger43 8y ago

The real answer here is that it's proably never going to be cheaper to buy a bank with a working it platform as merging terabyte worth of actively changing data from an underdocumented 1960 noSQL database into a new greenfield product is the hard problem almost nobody have succeeded at doing without massive problems and unexpected delays and costs. In reality what happens when a bank buys another bank is that yet another middleware layer is introduced so that frontend system can access data from both of the old system not that one system is discarded while the other survive.

shakna 8y ago
> underdocumented 1960 noSQL database Depends on what you mean by 'undocumented'. The specsheets for the Fortran part of the stack at CommBank was 4000+ pages last I saw it. The COBOL side was 9000+. Then there were a couple million test cases for both, and a running system with no real users that got tested before production.
tim333 8y ago
You'd think they could copy over the limited data people actually need - account balance, direct debits, mortgage status and payments and the like over to the new system and archive all the other stuff?