FIS and BNY on the Modernisation of Bank Tech

Michelle Henrich, FIS and Carl Slabicki, BNY, unpack how banks are modernising their technology stacks and what that means for developers and product teams. Henrich starts by recalling the “old way” of building digital banking: developers had to wire up multiple back-end platforms one by one, each with its own interface and standards such as XML, SOAP, REST, all different. That fragmentation made integrations slow and brittle, so many banks used APIs only when they absolutely had to, rather than as a platform for experimentation and new products.

Slabicki explains how BNY is tackling that problem with an enterprise-wide, platform operating model through instead of every line of business solving the same problems in different ways, core capabilities, like KYC, billing, onboarding, and risk, are built once and owned by a central team, which is exposed across the bank via APIs. The result is a single source of truth, less duplicative tech, and common tooling and processes. For developers and product managers, that means they can consume well-governed services rather than reinvent them, which raises quality and speeds delivery.

Slabicki highlights, beyond the operating model, how AI is being woven into the software development lifecycle. Teams use AI to help draft user stories, generate initial code from those stories, and then create and even run more robust test cases. The goal isn’t to replace engineers or testers; it’s to elevate them—freeing time from repetitive tasks and pushing both speed and quality higher.

Put together, Henrich’s point about past integration pain and Slabicki’s view of “build once, reuse everywhere” show where bank tech is heading: fewer one-off connections, more shared services, and API-first design. Add AI as an accelerant, and you get faster iteration cycles and cleaner production releases.