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Replace Core System? Why Nat City Won't.

Article Excerpt
Banks around the world are rolling out plans to overhaul their core systems, and many observers are wondering when the big U.S. banking companies will finally replace their own aging cores.

For National City Corp., the answer is: Maybe never.

Conventional wisdom holds that these systems, many of which have been in operation for decades, just cannot keep up with the demands of the modern, real-time financial services industry. But Joseph T. McCartin, National City's chief information officer, says that he has found numerous ways to update his company's core system, including replacing some functions and offloading several others to different systems.

The $150.4 billion-asset Cleveland banking company uses a 30-year-old mainframe-based core, developed in-house, and Mr. McCartin said, "Our system posts debits and credits as well as anything in the Western free world. It's cheap, and we own the code."

"I don't see any reason to" replace it, he said.

Instead, Mr. McCartin advocates an approach he calls "core renewal," a process that he compared...

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