Most of the senior leaders I speak to are not in denial about their legacy problems.
They know the estate is fragile. They know the cost of change is too high and the pace of delivery too slow. They have seen enough incidents and near misses to understand that the risk is not hypothetical.
And yet, many of those same leaders still end up choosing inaction dressed up as caution.
They commission another study. They fund one more channel project. They scale back the scope of the core programme until it is little more than a cosmetic refresh. All of this feels safer than committing to a real transformation. On a PowerPoint slide, doing less looks like managing risk.
In reality, it is the opposite.
When you have water under the floorboards, deciding not to lift the parquet does not reduce your exposure. It simply delays the moment when the damage becomes visible in a way you can no longer ignore.
You are not avoiding risk. You are compounding it.
In banking, we have lived for years with a growing mismatch between what the world expects and what our systems can comfortably deliver. Customers want instant, embedded, personalised services. Regulators expect robust, explainable processes and timely data. Fintechs and big tech platforms are happy to intermediate the relationship if we cannot. That external pressure is only increasing.
At the same time, the internal situation is deteriorating.
Technical debt accumulates. The people who understand the old code retire. Point fixes proliferate. The integration map becomes a thicket of exceptions and undocumented shortcuts. You can still keep things running, but each incident is a little harder to resolve, each change a little riskier to make.
If you wait long enough, you end up with the worst of both worlds. A legacy estate that is increasingly unmanageable and an external environment that has moved on without you.
That is not prudence. That is strategic negligence.
I am not advocating reckless big‑bang programmes. My new book (Rip Out the Core) contains more than enough cautionary tales to prove that approach is usually suicide. What I am arguing is that choosing not to act decisively is no longer a neutral option. The cost of delay is real, even if it does not show up neatly as a line item in the budget.
You see it in missed opportunities.
The product you could not launch because the core could not support it. The partnership you turned down because integration would take two years. The customers who quietly shifted their primary relationship to someone else while you were debating your options.
You also see it in the emotional tone inside the organisation.
Talented people do not stay in places where everything interesting dies in committee. Architects who want to build the future will eventually leave if all they are asked to do is put new duct tape on old problems. Product owners who care about customers get tired of saying “we cannot do that here.”
One of the key messages in my book is that progressive modernisation is both possible and necessary. You do not have to bet the bank on a single heroic programme. You do, however, have to make a clear choice that you are going to tackle the foundations in a structured way, wave after wave, instead of hiding behind incrementalism forever.
That starts with honesty.
About risk. About cost. About the fact that there is no version of the future in which you can stay as you are and still be relevant.
It also requires a shift in mindset. From seeing modernisation as a painful one‑off project to treating it as an ongoing capability, a way of operating.
In my kitchen, the turning point was when I accepted that mopping was no longer a solution. It was a temporary coping mechanism disguising a deeper problem.
Once that mental shift happened, the decision to renovate stopped being optional.
It became the only rational choice.
Banks are at a similar inflection point.
You can keep mopping. You can add more duct tape. You can tweak and patch and postpone. For a while.
But the day will come when the cost of inaction lands all at once in a way that nobody can ignore.
If this feels uncomfortably close to your reality, take it as a prompt rather than a rebuke. My book lays out a practical path from recognition to action without jumping off the cliff. For now, I would invite you to ask one simple question with your leadership team.
Are we genuinely managing risk by deferring core decisions, or are we just hoping the floor will hold?
Hope is not a strategy. Blueprint, Construct and Harden can be.
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End of 2025, and a sprint into 2026
I always find late December slightly surreal.
The calendar insists the year is “wrapping up”, as if anything in life ever truly wraps up. It mostly just changes shape.
Still, I like this moment. It forces a pause, and if I’m honest, I need the pause.
Before everyone disappears into family time, skiing, flu, or that strange limbo between Christmas and New Year, I just want to say thank you.
Thank you to clients who trusted me with messy problems. Thank you to colleagues and partners who challenged my thinking and improved the work. Thank you to people who read, listened, shared, or sent thoughtful notes.
It means more than you probably realise.
If we spoke this year, worked together, or argued (politely) about the future of banking, I’m grateful.
Wishing you a calm end to the year, and a strong start to 2026.
