[spangry]

Correct. Most banks are running back end infrastructure from the 80s with lots of manual or semi-manual processes (e.g. overnight interbank batch reconciliation, at least in Australia). From an outsider's perspective, it appears that retail bank management is completely technically illiterate.

Which unfortunately also makes them the perfect marks for being sold inappropriate tech solutions (see: blockchain mania).

[shaftway]

From an insider's perspective, yes. They are completely technically illiterate. Banks. Exchanges. Brokers. The whole financial services industry.

[spangry]

Oh yeah, don't get me started on exchanges. I'm astounded at how bad their technical processes are. The ASX (Australian Stock Exchange) has something like a 3 day time to settlement. And I'm told it's one of the more 'modern' exchanges (I guess the other ones are still using stock tickers and abacuses).

[meric]

Unfortunately 2 days now. I appreciate the time to settlement because I could buy my shares and pay 2 days later. Sometimes it takes time to get funds from other accounts, and I wanted to buy (or sell) today, for example, when the quarterly just came out.

[PhasmaFelis]

Part of me wants to sneer in disgust, but part of me considers that we live and work in a tech industry that truly, honestly believes that "move fast and break things" is a great design principle, and maybe we don't want those people in charge of the foundation of the global economy.

I dunno.

[rectang]

Perhaps open source projects such as Apache Fineract (incubating) can leapfrog the slow-moving giants.

http://fineract.incubator.apache.org/

    Apache Fineract (\’fīn-,ә-,rakt\) is an open source
    system for core banking as a platform. Fineract 
    provides a reliable, robust, and affordable solution 
    for entrepreneurs, financial institutions, and service 
    providers to offer financial services to the world’s 
    2 billion underbanked and unbanked.

[spangry]

Sorry I'm a bit late to reply. Just wanted to say thanks very much for telling me about this. I now know what I'm doing this weekend :)