Core banking modernization finally gets unstuck

Today: much of banking still runs on decades-old core systems that are risky and expensive to replace — the migration that never happens.

The next five years: AI lowers the cost and risk of modernization — understanding legacy code, mapping data, and accelerating migration — making projects feasible that were perpetually deferred.

The AI relation: the bottleneck was never desire; it was the cost and risk of untangling old systems. As that drops, a wave of long-delayed modernization becomes viable.

Signal: watch core modernization budgets unfreeze. The constraint that held them back is eroding.