[mttddd]

yep, a lot of this is fallout from the financial crisis and all of the bank mergers that have happened. A number of the big banks i worked with a few years ago had sooo many different systems from all their acquisitions and what they really want is one

[bob1029]

This is an excellent point. It's fun to blame consultants, but the amount of M&A that has occurred can probably be implicated for half of the complexity seen in banking today.

The nuance with M&A between 2 banks is that one usually "wins" in terms of the core tech (i.e. where all the customers and accounts are ultimately stored) and absorbs the other. There are companies that specialize in this exact activity. The part where it gets super messy is with the jurisdiction-specific systems & procedures that have to be folded into 1 operational space.