I’ve been in the Philippines banking industry for three and a half years before I resigned my corporate job as an Programmer. That is not a very long time but I’ve made a few observations. I am specifically referring the local bank’s information system, and its software solutions. I believe that a financial institution is the most conservative when it comes to adapting new technologies that It sacrifices the productivity and growth of its employees. It literally kills the career of its people who runs the company.

How does that happen? Glad you ask. Let us first look at the technical aspects of my previous employer. The Information System that powers its bank wide IT operations is a foreign system. Around 2004 they move from a legacy mainframe platform to open standard UNIX platform and a new-generation core banking solution. It was a strategic move. There are also unconfirmed rumors that other local banks adapted that technology for its IT operations.

While there’s nothing wrong to use the trusted and tested foreign system, I believe that we Filipinos are highly capable. Instead of using this foreign technologies, why don’t we build our own? Of course this won’t happen overnight but we need to try. I hope that Filipino IT software companies open their eyes and build software solutions for banking operations. It is in the banks that software development is broken and degrading. It is worth seeing that one day a Filipino software company stands toe to toe against these foreign banking solutions.