Finastra Migrates Core Systems for 62 CU and Community Bank Clients to the Cloud

The Austin, Texas-based fintech and core processor Finastra said it migrated 62 credit unions and community banks on its Fusion Phoenix core banking system to the cloud-based Microsoft Azure over the past year, signifying the first and largest mass-migration of cores to the cloud in the financial sector. All of Finastra’s Fusion Phoenix customers that opted for cloud delivery are now running in Azure, the fintech said.

With Azure, Finastra said banks and credit unions can now consume – rather than own and run – core applications, freeing up IT resources to focus on competitiveness and growth. Other benefits of migrating to the cloud include access to enhanced capabilities to mine data for insight and the ability to scale services to keep pace with need, the fintech said.

The migration began in February 2020 with two early adopters: The Winter Park, Fla.-based Commerce National Bank & Trust and Tacoma, Wash.-based Commencement Bank. Finastra reported that each migration took no more than five working days per customer and existing code did not have to be rewritten.

“Cloud technology is a big enabler for financial institutions, particularly smaller ones, as it provides a low-cost path for innovation and Open Banking, leveling the playing field for them to compete with the large banks and non-bank fintech,” John Weinkowitz, vice president, retail, community markets for Finastra, said. “This initiative also enables Finastra to run large financial institutions on the Fusion Phoenix platform and will provide many other benefits to our existing customers, such as improved availability, security and system monitoring.”

“Migrating to a cloud-based core solves a number of problems inherent to legacy cores, including the issue of interconnectivity between different banking channels and solutions,” David Koscheski, director of industry, banking for Microsoft, said. “Fortunately, cloud-based core migrations are far simpler than previous core transformations, due to the streamlined efficiency of the process.”

Finastra is one of the industry’s top core processors when it comes to market share of larger credit unions, according to data from Callahan & Associates as of June 20, 2020. For credit unions with more than $1 billion in assets, Finastra comes in third behind Symitar and Fiserv. For credit unions with between $250 million and $1 billion in assets, Finastra has the fifth-highest amount of market share. And based on the number of credit union clients, Finastra is in ninth place, serving 2.79% of credit unions industry-wide.