Arvest Bank building new core

Arvest Bank is switching from its existing core to a new one built from scratch by a development team working closely with the bank.

The $26 billion financial institution has been in the building phase for the past 10 months, adopting a side-by-side approach with its existing Fiserv Signature core as Arvest looks to get its new one ready, said Ninish Ukkan, chief technology officer at Arvest Bank, last week at Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2023 in Charlotte, N.C.

“We adopted an approach with builders that [doesn’t] lose sight of your current products and services from an existing core,” he said. “How do you have this dual-core, multi-core strategy where we’re able to support both, and then either migrating [or adding] existing products that live and die based on your existing code and competitive view on the new code?”

The new core is one of many technologies in the works by Arvest, as the bank introduced an equipment finance lending product in conjunction with banking platform Thought Machine late last month.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based bank’s current focus is running its legacy applications on the existing core while slowly transitioning applications ready within the new core in the next year, Ukkan added.

“That’s what we’ve been working on,” he said. “So far, so good. I’ll come back and tell you about it next year.”