Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?
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Not sure if this should be in IT Discussion or IT Business....
I work at a small community bank and have talked to several others in a similar positions as me. One common thing I've noticed is that we all have consistently poor experiences with our core banking vendors, weather its Fiserv, FIS, Finastra, Jack Henry, etc.
What it comes down to is that these are big financial corporations that I feel absorb or consume small community banks and sell them expensive contracts and provide pretty poor levels of product support while continually moving away from the products they sell you. They nickle and dime you for everything and don't seem to really care about providing good long term support. Yes there are occasionally individual employees or technicians that are good people and great at their job, but most the support I talk to do not seem to know whats going on and have to reach out to other people and departments for everything. In our case, it feels like our vendor is too big and spread out/fragmented to really be agile enough to effectively meet our needs as a small community bank. We are just a tiny fish to them. So yeah, the overall experience is that they are just using us as one more "vacuum tube" to suck up money from a small community while doing the bare minimum to hold up their end of the contract.
I was just reading this article which hits home a little bit.
So has anyone here ever worked at or done business with a community bank that actually has consistently good things to say about their core financial vendor? I'm kinda sorta just looking for other companies to suggest we look into at some point..
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@dave247 said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:
I was just reading this article which hits home a little bit.
Paywall, can't read.
So my own two cents - I'm not surprised by your experience at all. There's nothing stopping them from providing great customer service, but as you mention, you're a small fish, and if they have other options, they don't need to care about you and your needs, and sense it's pretty clear no one else does either, it's not like you can leave them.
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@Dashrender said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:
@dave247 said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:
I was just reading this article which hits home a little bit.
Paywall, can't read.
So my own two cents - I'm not surprised by your experience at all. There's nothing stopping them from providing great customer service, but as you mention, you're a small fish, and if they have other options, they don't need to care about you and your needs, and sense it's pretty clear no one else does either, it's not like you can leave them.
Well we can leave them, and we will in the next couple of years. The issue is that we 99% will end up with another vendor that's equally bad unless we can figure out how to sort through the bad ones.
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The only one I've ever had dealings with starts with an F. I have listened to a few of the others give their "sales pitch" but when you are so heavily involved and invested with the same core for so many years, there is a "fear" among the C-levels that prevent them from wanting to change. Some of the ones we listened to even offered to buy out the current contract, etc. just to be awarded the contract.
My biggest gripe with the above mentioned is the lack of keeping software current and not using legacy programs and software. In 2020, we still are forced to use IE11 for most of the web-based items. If you question it, you are asked to submit a feature request to update a platform.
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@dave247 said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:
So has anyone here ever worked at or done business with a community bank that actually has consistently good things to say about their core financial vendor? I'm kinda sorta just looking for other companies to suggest we look into at some point..
Nope. And we tend to find the same thing in the small cross section of banks that we talk to - they all know that their vendors are crap but none are willing to really work hard to find an alternative, none will take the vendors to task, and none are willing to invest in or group together to invest in something better.
All the same reasons that nearly any market ends up with bad software - universally the customers just don't take their businesses seriously enough and so their vendors don't either.
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@scottalanmiller said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:
@dave247 said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:
So has anyone here ever worked at or done business with a community bank that actually has consistently good things to say about their core financial vendor? I'm kinda sorta just looking for other companies to suggest we look into at some point..
Nope. And we tend to find the same thing in the small cross section of banks that we talk to - they all know that their vendors are crap but none are willing to really work hard to find an alternative, none will take the vendors to task, and none are willing to invest in or group together to invest in something better.
All the same reasons that nearly any market ends up with bad software - universally the customers just don't take their businesses seriously enough and so their vendors don't either.
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@brandon220 said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:
The only one I've ever had dealings with starts with an F. I have listened to a few of the others give their "sales pitch" but when you are so heavily involved and invested with the same core for so many years, there is a "fear" among the C-levels that prevent them from wanting to change. Some of the ones we listened to even offered to buy out the current contract, etc. just to be awarded the contract.
My biggest gripe with the above mentioned is the lack of keeping software current and not using legacy programs and software. In 2020, we still are forced to use IE11 for most of the web-based items. If you question it, you are asked to submit a feature request to update a platform.
Yeah a lot of our services require IE11 and they wont even work with modern browsers. Much of the applications we have been using are terrible, slow, clunky and end of life with minimal support from our core vendor.
