Pub. 14 2019-2020 Issue 6

WWW.NEBANKERS.ORG 10 WASHINGTON UPDATE Rob Nichols, President & CEO, American Bankers Association Improving Bank-Core Relationships to Help Community Banks Thrive W HILE WE HAVE OVER 5,000 BANKS THAT COMPETE WITH each other, the vast majority of those banks rely on just a handful of large technology companies to provide the core processing systems that allow banks to operate every day. More than any other topic—evenmore than credit unions!—I hear frombank leaders that their existing relationship with their core processor limits their bank’s ability to innovate and provide the newbanking tools customers want and need in the digital era. For that reason, I convened a banker-led ABA Core Platforms Committee with a mandate to improve the relationship between banks and their core providers. Over the past year, the commit- tee has had direct and productive conversations with executives from four of the major core providers: Fiserv, FIS, Jack Henry and Finastra. The committee members have outlined the pri- mary issues facing banks, including data access, API deployment and contract fairness. To their credit, the cores have engaged in a healthy dialogue and shared their perspectives—and we have heard from some bankers that their conversations with their core providers have been more productive since the committee began its work. In an effort to formalize that progress, we released the committee’s Principles for Strong Bank-Core Provider Relationship—a set of principles that bankers can use as a starting point for their conversations with core providers—at our annual convention last fall. Fiserv, FIS, Jack Henry and Finastra also provided the com- mittee with information on how they are addressing data access,