Ricardo Josua, Pismo Co-Founder and CEO, and Juliana Binatti, Co-Founder and CPO, were featured guests at Financial Services Industry (FSI) Speed Up Enablement, an online event held by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The conference gathered AWS squads that work with clients from the financial services industry. Ricardo and Juliana discussed the challenges of implementing a modern core banking solution and migrating legacy systems to a cloud-native platform.
Facing resistance
One of our co-founders’ main challenges when presenting the Pismo banking solution is to break some clients’ resistance to leaving legacy systems behind to implement new technologies. Ricardo says that convincing them to migrate to a cloud-native platform is just the first step.
“We have to explain the logic behind organising fragmented services and show their benefits. But to see these advantages, you need to implement the services. You gain efficiency by redesigning processes with a different logic.”
Ricardo uses an interesting metaphor to define some legacy systems that large banks use: he says they are like crocodiles – robust, with brutal efficiency, but slow to move.
“They have difficulty moving at the speed they want with a structure that has been operating for decades, but with stacked technology. Although the business continues working, the ability to move is increasingly sacrificed,” he explains.
Redesigning core banking
The challenges Pismo co-founders face have been moving over the years. Juliana says that by 2017 when Pismo was prospecting its first clients, the argument was to show the power of a cloud-native solution. At that time, Pismo’s presentation deck was geared towards showing the security of a cloud solution.
“Now we have passed the barrier of cloud migration. We need to show we don’t redesign what we already have by changing technologies. We have to show we can make the best use of the resources we currently have to keep the operation standing”, she explains.
Regulation is not a problem anymore
If incumbents were concerned about cloud data storage regulation a couple of years ago, this is not a problem anymore. Ricardo says it’s something settled in most countries where Pismo operates. “Ironically, the regulatory theme is more about reporting data than anything related to infrastructure or security.”
On the Pismo platform, our clients can store everything from registration information to data related to financial transactions and balance positions. “We ensure we have all the information of each account holder and the institutions that are our clients,” says Juliana. “We generate data so that they can report everything they need.”
Changing mindsets
Our CPO says that although there is still resistance, the Pismo team works to show how the Pismo Platform can improve gains, efficiency, and scalability in the payments industry.
“The most difficult barrier to overcome is about changing mindsets. We show there are simpler ways to do things for every step of the journey. Although they’ll be different from the operational and accounting efficiency they had mapped in 40 years of operation, their gains with our technology will be greater.”
Allowing customers to use the component they need from the Pismo platform is also a way of convincing them that changing mindsets is worth it.
“We seek the best technology for each part of our system. And this allows our clients to use our complete solution or just some integration components,” adds Juliana. “They are free to choose what they want. This architecture was designed to guarantee scalability and availability, but it really gave us an advantage when dealing with our customers.”
