In today’s financial services landscape, the promise of artificial intelligence is everywhere… Hyper personalisation, intelligent automation, real-time insights, and AI-assisted customer experiences. But here’s the truth: AI doesn’t run on ambition. It runs on data.

If your customer and transactional data remains locked inside monolithic core systems, even the most sophisticated AI will underdeliver. The most effective path to AI-powered transformation isn’t a complete rebuild of your core – it’s strategic decomposition. By making high-quality data available in near real-time to your channels and platforms, banks can unlock AI’s full potential without overhauling their entire architecture.

At Publicis Sapient, we believe unlocking your data is the critical enabler for harnessing the full value of AI across the financial enterprise. It is no longer necessary to completely rebuild your core infrastructure. Instead, what’s required is strategic decomposition of monolithic systems to ensure near real-time data availability to your channels and AI applications.

The Data Access Conundrum

Banks are acutely aware that their legacy systems create data silos. Research reveals that 70% of banks’ IT budgets are still spent on maintaining legacy systems. Moreover, more than half cite the limitations of their core as the primary barrier to transformation.

Despite a shared recognition of the need to change, many institutions remain hesitant, concerned by the perceived complexity, cost and risk of restructuring their data architecture and overhauling foundational platforms. But this hesitation comes at a cost. As customers demand more personalised and seamless experiences, and digital challengers launch AI-enabled services at speed, traditional institutions risk falling behind.

Why Data Accessibility Unlocks AI’s Potential

The simple truth is: AI cannot thrive in isolation. It needs high-quality, accessible, and timely data. It needs customer and transactional information that’s available near real-time. And it needs a composable, event-driven architecture where data can flow freely across customer journeys and operational workflows.

Decomposing monolithic core banking systems enables all of this. By creating strategic APIs and data layers, banks can liberate critical information from legacy platforms and make it available to AI-powered services without the need for complete core replacement. In our work with leading banks globally, we’ve seen accessible data unlock:

• 1:1 personalisation at scale
• Real-time fraud detection and risk modelling
• AI-assisted customer onboarding and service
• Automation across lending, compliance and operations

This is not theoretical. It’s already happening. In one engagement, we helped a regional bank transform its operating model via a phased core modernisation programme – delivering a one-to-one return on investment over five years by shifting from reactive IT spend to proactive value creation through accessible data.

Progressive, Not Paralysing

One of the biggest myths around core modernisation is that it requires a disruptive, ‘big bang’ transformation. That’s no longer the case. Advances in architecture, engineering tools, and AI-powered development platforms – such as our own Sapient Slingshot – now make it possible to modernise progressively and liberate critical data, rather than rebuilding everything from scratch.

Techniques like multi-core routing, event-driven orchestration and domain-driven design allow banks to gradually make customer and transactional data available near real-time to channels and AI applications – all without jeopardising day-to-day operations or requiring full core replacement.

Reorienting Around Data and People

Technology alone is not enough. Successful transformation requires a cultural shift – one that reorients the organisation around data, agility, and human outcomes. The future-ready bank is not only AI-enabled but data-led and human-centric.

By unlocking and democratising data through modern architecture, banks can power everything from predictive decision-making to better colleague collaboration. We are already seeing leading firms embed AI into their customer and employee journeys. Not as add-ons, but as integral parts of reimagined experiences built on liberated data.

The Future Belongs to the AI-Enabled

As AI capabilities continue to evolve, the divide between data-rich and data-poor, and AI-enabled and AI-limited institutions will widen. The leaders will be those that treat transformation not just as a technical challenge, but as a strategic imperative – reshaping how they operate, compete and serve.

Now is the time to act. Unlocking your data through strategic core modernisation is no longer a question of ‘if’, but ‘how’. Because in the age of AI, the intelligence of your bank will only ever be as strong as the data it can access and learn from, and ultimately the systems that underpin it.

Find out more from Publicis Sapient about core modernisation here