Finastra has brought its core banking platform, Fusion Phoenix, to the cloud, with Commerce National Bank & Trust of Winter Park, Florida, and Commencement Bank of Tacoma, Washington being the first US banks to access the core solution via public cloud.
“Bringing core banking to the cloud in the United States marks an important milestone in core delivery,” said Vincent Pugliese, Senior Vice President and General Manager, US Retail & Lending, Finastra. “Now, new and existing customers of our open, modern core can choose to access it via Microsoft’s enterprise-ready, trusted Azure cloud platform, for faster access to innovation, transformation at scale, and accelerated time to market. Institutions can consume rather than own and run core applications, freeing up IT resources to focus on competitiveness and growth. They can also access enhanced capabilities to mine data for meaningful insight and scale services to keep pace with bank and evolving technology needs.”
“Legacy cores are often a roadblock to innovation,” said Pat Sideman, Vice President, Deposit Operations Officer, Commerce National Bank & Trust. “With an open core, using a platform approach, we can easily integrate new solutions and cutting-edge capabilities – developed internally or externally – into our core. Combined with a cloud delivery model, access to innovation becomes even easier, with updates being managed by Finastra and pushed out in real-time.”
Finastra selected Azure as the platform to provide its cloud-hosted solutions, which already include Finastra’s Fusion MortgagebotLOS, Fusion uOpen, Fusion Global PAYplus, Fusion Essence and FusionFabric.cloud. The addition of Fusion Phoenix is part of Finastra’s ongoing commitment to offer its clients choice when it comes to cloud deployment for all major products. Together with Microsoft, Finastra can offer some of the highest standards of security, resiliency, performance and operating excellence.
“The future of banking technology is in the cloud,” said Bill Borden, corporate vice president of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft Corp. “As financial institutions push to digitally transform their businesses to successfully compete, the cloud is unlocking and accelerating new opportunities to optimize operations, empower employees, transform products, and deliver the differentiated customer experiences that drive competitive advantage.”
“Banks want to take products to market faster but are often hampered by long and expensive IT costs associated with change,” said Stephen Greer, Senior Analyst, Celent. “Banks are considering the needs of a platform from a customer-centric design viewpoint, where new products, changes, and integration are seamless. The cost of innovation is reduced by de-risking the build process and shortening time to market.”
