Bank Technology Races to Keep Pace With Speed of Today’s Business

Michael Haney describes himself as a “reformed banker.” As head of product strategy at composable banking architecture provider Galileo Financial Technologies, he has a unique perspective on payment modernization and paints a vivid picture of modern consumer expectations that some banking executives ignore at their peril.

“We increasingly live in this world where we expect things to happen instantly, right? We push a button and there’s a movie on my TV screen, or my goods are delivered within the hour,” Haney said, detailing this Netflix-like expectation of immediacy that represents a fundamental challenge to traditional banking architecture — one that cannot be solved through technology alone, but must deliver measurable business value to survive.

Financial institutions are recognizing that technology strategy and business strategy can no longer be separated. In a recent panel discussion with PYMNTS, Haney discussed the matter with Dan Williams, senior vice president of Embedded Banking at KeyBank.

“When you realize how prevalent technology is in consumer choice and how they make payments, how they select things, you realize that the technology strategy and your business strategy are hugely intertwined,” Williams said during a wide-ranging discussion on banking modernization. Haney echoed this view, pointing out that banks face evolving customer expectations. Adding to his comments about the “right now” world, Haney noted that digitally native generations didn’t grow up with physical cash, checks or waiting days for payments to process. They expect financial transactions to happen with the same immediacy as their entertainment services.

This integration of technology and business strategy requires banks to think differently about their infrastructure. “When I think about how easy it is to do business with KeyBank, fundamentally, I’m talking about our payment services and applications where our clients want to consume them,” Williams said. “And are they fundamentally interoperable with those points of consumption at the moment they want to do it.”

External Pressures Driving Transformation

The acceleration of technological change has created significant external pressure on financial institutions. Williams pointed to the changing distribution of financial services as a key driver. “A lot of times when we think about our delivery of payment products, depository products, you’re continuing to see them intertwined with the technology which our customers use,” he said.

Haney identified three critical customer expectations reshaping banking: real-time processing, data-driven insights and blended financial services. “We’re moving out of this world where financial services exist in these silos,” he said. “They want to blend the best of all of these.” He noted that features like early wage access and buy now, pay later capabilities now have become expected by commercial clients as well as consumers.

Both executives emphasized that consumers and businesses increasingly expect financial services to be embedded within their everyday workflows and applications rather than requiring separate interactions with banking channels. For legacy institutions responding to these challenges, certain architectural changes have become essential. Haney outlined three key components: modern middleware (including API management and event streaming architecture), cloud infrastructure and a data-first mindset — critical building blocks for delivering real-time, customer-centric experiences.

“A lot of the legacy architectures didn’t have a data-first mindset, which makes it very hard to get data moving in and out,” Haney said. “That’s why we see chief data officers arising — especially at large banks — along with data governance, data standards and an overall focus on data.”

Williams emphasized the importance of interoperability within business workflows: “Ultimately everything we do in financial services is fundamentally part of some broader business workflow,” he said. “There is something that happened before the payment that the business did to decide to originate it. There’s something that happens post-payment within their business to reconcile it,” he said, noting that coupling financial systems with workflow metadata creates cleaner processes that benefit customers.

The Rise of Composable Modernization

The panel discussion also noted a significant shift away from traditional “rip and replace” approaches to modernization. Haney described several approaches, including the “greenfield” method where banks launch new product lines or digital sidecars to experiment before tackling legacy infrastructure.

For banks not interested in greenfield approaches, Haney recommended “an iterative and progressive style approach” where institutions “slowly eat away at the legacy infrastructure.” He emphasized the importance of showing business value within each budgeting cycle: “Long gone are the days where we have five-year transformation programs and you don’t see business value until the very end,” he said.

Williams reinforced the importance of continuous improvement: “When you think about being able to deliver discrete benefits in those functions or experiences … the ultimate impact to the customer experience is you’re constantly improving and adapting.”

When asked about the concept of futureproofing banking infrastructure, Williams was direct: “I kind of think even the term ‘future proofing’ is a little bit silly. Like, what is a single thing we do now that somehow means we don’t have to change in the future? It’s a buzzword that caught on, but it’s a misnomer,” he said. “The more important principle of future proofing is putting your business in a position where you can improve and adapt over time. It’s all going to change; it’s all going to move on. It’s just whether or not I am leading or following those matters.”

Composable Banking Becomes Table Stakes

The conversation concluded with perspectives on whether composable banking has shifted from strategic advantage to table stakes.

“The concept of nimbleness, the concept of composability, these things that we’ve been talking about are definitely table stakes,” Haney said, though he questioned whether FinTechs represent true existential threats given regulatory advantages that traditional banks maintain.

Williams added that the industry often oversimplifies the bank-versus-FinTech narrative, at a time when FinTechs are redefining their identity and business model. Regardless of those relationships, both executives brought the conversation back to execution.

“We have a ton of amazing relationships with FinTechs,” Williams said. “They can be customers that we power, they can be distribution channels, or they can have technology that we augment our core services with. This is not a strategic problem; this is an execution problem. Everyone’s reading from the same cheat sheet around how the world’s changing. It’s just whether or not you can execute.”