Core banking technology touches every account the bank holds and nearly every other system it runs. Most days, nobody thinks about it. Then a growth plan stalls because the core can’t support a new product, or a renewal notice lands on the CFO’s desk, and the core moves to the top of the list.

Why community banks start looking at their core

Navanta’s sales and account teams talk with bankers about core decisions regularly, and many banks and credit unions face the same challenges that bring them to their search for a new core. It is rarely a single event, but several things that have been building for a while:

• Service requests that stall. Cases take longer to resolve, and each one needs another round of follow-up. One bank that had been on its core since the early 1980s found this frustrating enough to form a review team and look at its options.
• A roadmap that does not follow the strategy. Features and integrations arrive slowly, fintech connections are limited, digital treasury tools fall short, and the provider does not collaborate on what the bank is trying to do.
• Infrastructure that outgrew the team. A bank with $2.5 billion in assets found that running Fiserv Premier in-house was no longer sustainable, because security, upgrades, and infrastructure took too much to manage.
• Cybersecurity risk it couldn’t close alone. A bank with $309 million in assets named cybersecurity as a main driver, with risk gaps it could not close on its own.
• Decades of IT knowledge that’s hard to replace. At a bank with $103 million in assets, an IT leader of roughly 40 years began preparing to retire, and replacing that depth internally looked difficult. Cybersecurity and less reliance on hard-to-find staff became the priorities.
• A core that sits apart from everything else. A $2 billion bank already had a strong managed IT relationship and wanted its core and IT working together under one partner. Its CIO described the decision as driven by continuity, not dissatisfaction.
• A contract that is ending. The renewal date is within the next few years, and the bank wants to see what else is available before signing again.

A search does not always end in a new core platform. The bank on its core since the early 1980s decided that a full conversion was not appealing, given the training demands, operational disruption, and risk, and chose an option that supported its existing core. The $2.5 billion bank moved from running Fiserv Premier in-house to Navanta core hosting. Some banks change the platform, and some change who runs and supports it.

Staying put is also a decision, and it carries risk. A core that cannot scale puts growth goals out of reach, whether that means a new lending line, new markets, or a bigger customer base. Cyberthreats keep changing, and a core environment that is not actively managed and monitored falls behind them. Examiners expect a bank to manage its vendors and its technology risk with care, and that is harder when support is thin or the core sits apart from security and compliance work.

Every bank on this list wanted the same two things: a core it could stop worrying about, and confidence that someone would be there when something needed to change. That’s the real decision, not just which core to run.

What Fiserv partners like Navanta bring to the table

Navanta’s core banking work began in 1991 through a partnership with ITI, and today Navanta is a Fiserv reseller, running the full Fiserv core suite in its own dedicated data center for community banks and credit unions. You get access to a platform backed by billions of dollars of investment and used by more community banks than any other in the world, without carrying that infrastructure yourself, and it runs in a high availability environment. The offering reaches past core processing to digital banking, payments, document management, retail banking, and treasury, so you’re not coordinating a separate vendor for each.

The Fiserv partnership is only part of the picture. What Navanta builds around it matters just as much to the people running the bank:

• Support from people who have done the job. The support team is made up of experienced bankers who average 13 years in the same seat as yours.
• Room to mix and match. Solutions can be combined to fit your strategic objectives rather than a fixed package.
• Contracts that make sense. Cost and contract structures are kept simple and aligned with what bankers need.
• A conversion engine built for growth. When the strategy calls for a conversion, the process is part of the offering and not an afterthought. In client stories, bankers describe conversions that went more quietly than they expected, with Navanta staff onsite in branches during go-live.
• A community of bankers. Clients share what has worked at their own banks, which saves time on problems someone else has already solved.
• Security and visibility. Layered safeguards protect the core in the background while meeting regulatory and compliance standards, and real-time data shows leaders and frontline teams what is happening when it matters.
• Core, IT, and compliance in one place. The core is integrated with Navanta’s bank-exclusive Managed IT and compliance solutions, so it is not managed in isolation from security.

The people on your team already know the community and the customers. The core should be one less thing they have to work around. If the contract is coming up or the current system is holding back the plan, a conversation with a Navanta banker is a practical first step.