Traditional Banks at a crossroads: adapt or disappear

Narrow Banking: a legacy borne of regulatory caution

The concept of narrow banking traces back to early 20th-century reforms, including the “Chicago Plan” proposed after the Great Depression, advocating 100% reserve backing for deposits to minimize speculative risk. Over time, the idea evolved into a cautious regulatory posture, prioritizing safety over agility.

Now, traditional banks must ask themselves: does this cautious legacy stance serve them, or is it holding them back in a fast-moving digital era?

What holds traditional Banks back?

While traditional banks have long benefited from customer inertia and regulatory inertia, their reliance on legacy systems creates increasing friction:

• Legacy tech dominance: Approximately 95% of banks in Asia Pacific still rely on second- or third-generation banking technology, which stifles innovation and increases operational burdens. 
• Slow product launches and poor UX: Rigidity in systems hinders user experience enhancements and new offerings.
• AML and compliance limitations: Inconsistent data visibility and auditability expose operations to risk.
• Operational cost burden: Legacy platforms often demand significant maintenance budgets and high vendor dependency.

Trading platform health check: the Path to renewal

Enter the trading platform health check, a focused, expert-led diagnostic designed to deliver clarity on infrastructure risks and modernization readiness. Especially relevant for banks handling derivatives, treasury, risk, or structured products, this health check assesses:

• System architecture and customizations
• Production support capabilities
• Cloud migration readiness
• Regulatory readiness (e.g., FRTB, P&L transparency, exception handling)

Murex in Action: Asian Bank Examples

Murex’s MX.3 platform is at the forefront of modern trading and risk infrastructure in Asia:

• Bank of Hangzhou (China) upgraded its MX.3 deployment by implementing the FRTB-SA (Fundamental Review of the Trading Book – Standardized Approach) solution, achieving compliance in just eight months. This improvement eliminated reconciliation inefficiencies and shortened the time to launch new products.
• UOB (Singapore) now uses MX.3 to digitally manage Profit & Loss end-to-end. Their product control team can generate official P&L reports directly within MX.3, enhancing transparency and reducing manual reconciliation.
• RHB Bank (Malaysia) went live with MX.3 to meet both conventional and Islamic finance needs, streamlining its treasury and trading systems.
• China CITIC Bank International integrated its treasury platform with Murex to unify internal and external systems, supporting compliance and operational efficiency.

How Upskills powered by VISEO complements with modernization expertise

Although specific public case studies for Upskills in Asia are limited, the firm—founded by former Murex experts, has deep heritage in capital markets technology with proven capabilities that align strongly with trading platform modernization:

• Expertise with Murex MX.3: Configuration optimization, performance tuning, and regulatory readiness.
• Trading platform diagnostics: Identifying bottlenecks across front, middle, and back-office workflows.
• Regulatory and compliance support: Including FRTB readiness, P&L automation, exception handling, and auditability.
• Production and operational uplift: Teams, skills, incident resolution metrics, and support workflows.
• Cloud migration strategy: Hybrid-cloud architecture readiness, dependency mapping, and modern DevOps practices.

These capabilities make Upskills a strong ally for banks undertaking a trading platform health check, delivering not just diagnostics but credible modernization roadmaps.

The big picture: why this matters now

Asian banks must jettison slow, legacy-bound strategies, or risk irrelevance. A trading platform health check can provide:

• Immediate clarity on operational risk and technical debt
• Tactical roadmap for modernization, from cloud-readiness to compliance
• Strategic alignment with business goals: agility, innovation, efficiency

At VISEO, our hybrid-cloud modernization approach, bolstered by AI-enabled transformation tools, helps banks navigate this transition. We deliver minimized disruption, reduced risk, and superior customer experiences, transforming narrow banking constraints into opportunities for renewal.