“No silver bullets and no snake oil. Just hard-won lessons on how to move from monolithic legacy to platform-enabled and eventually agentic banking without breaking the bank on the way.”
Darmesh Mistry
Banking and Technology Advisor
In the early part of my career in Lloyds Bank I worked and later led a support team for many of the banks systems. As we hadn’t written the code we became highly critical not only of the code but the design of systems – many which had been running already for decades. However in support, hindsight is 20 20 vision we used to say, if only the original developers knew what we saw today, they’d surely have developed it differently. Though it wasn’t always possibly as more often than not a better approach needed technology that wasn’t previously available.
Fast forward forty years, and I've watched this movie play out countless times. Different banks, different geographies, different vendors, but the same fundamental mistakes. The core banking replacement project announced with fanfare. The consultants descending like locusts. The promises of transformation. And then, more often than not, the quiet retreat to "phased modernisation" when reality sets in – which is usually just expensive code for "we're going to patch the old system for another decade and hope for the best." I’ve always been for revolution but had to endure “step-wise refinement”.
So when Pål asked me to write this foreword, I'll admit I was initially skeptical. A book about core banking transformation? Really? I don’t believe in magic.
But then I read his manuscript, and something clicked. Not because Pål has invented some wonderous solution that will make legacy banking systems disappear overnight – he hasn't, and frankly, anyone promising that is selling snake oil. What Pål has done is something far more valuable and far more honest. He's given us a survival manual written by someone who's actually been in the trenches, who's lived through the disasters, and who's learned that transformation isn't about ripping everything out in one dramatic gesture – it's about understanding what you're actually trying to achieve and being brutally honest about where to start.
The flooded kitchen metaphor that runs through this book isn't just clever storytelling, though it is that. It's a perfect illustration of how most banks approach their technology problems. They see water on the floor and immediately want to demolish the entire kitchen, order the most expensive appliances, and hire an architect to design something worthy of a magazine cover. What they should be doing is finding the leak, understanding why it happened, and fixing the actual problem before anything else.
I've been advocating for what I call "agentic banking" – the idea that banks need to move from siloed systems making independent decisions to a unified "single brain" where intelligent agents collaborate in real-time. It's a vision I first articulated back in 2013 at Temenos, though the technology to properly implement it didn't exist then. I was simply too far ahead of the available technology. Today, the landscape has changed dramatically. We have the compute power. We have the AI capabilities. We have the architectural patterns. What we don't always have is the will to transform properly or the practical guidance on how to actually get there.
That's where Pål's Platform Enabled Banking Transformation approach becomes essential. You see, I can tell you what the future of banking should look like – and I do, regularly, much to the occasional dismay of traditional vendors – but the question everyone asks is: "How do we get from here to there without destroying the bank in the process?". This is ultimately the billion dollar question for bankers.
Pål's answer is refreshingly pragmatic. He's not promising a silver bullet. He's not selling you a framework that requires you to hire an army of certified consultants. He's showing you how to think about the problem differently, how to plan properly, how to choose what to build versus what to buy, and critically, how to avoid the common failure patterns that have sunk so many well-intentioned transformation programs.
What I particularly appreciate about this book is that Pål doesn't shy away from the complexity. Banking is complicated. Not because bankers want it to be – most would love simpler systems – but because decades of regulation, acquisition, product innovation, and technical debt have created an almost impossible tangle of interdependencies. Anyone who tells you transforming that is easy is either naive or hasn't actually tried to do it.
But here's the thing I've learned over my four decades in this industry: complexity isn't an excuse for inaction. The banks that are winning today – whether that's the neo-banks offering instant digital card issuance when your partner loses her wallet abroad, or the enlightened incumbents who've actually managed to modernise – they're not winning because they found a way to avoid complexity. They're winning because they found a way to manage it systematically, to break it down into achievable components, and to deliver real value incrementally rather than waiting for some mythical "big bang" go-live that never quite arrives.
Pål's kitchen renovation taught him what many transformation leaders learn the hard way: you can't just tear everything out and rebuild. You have to live in the house while you're renovating it. The bank has to keep banking while you're modernising it. Customers still need their payments processed. Regulators still need their reports. Staff still need systems that work. The art isn't in the demolition – any fool can destroy things. The art is in the careful, methodical, strategic rebuilding that doesn't bring the whole structure crashing down.
In this book, you'll find Pål's battle scars turned into practical wisdom. The war stories are real – he's lived them. The frameworks are tested – he's used them across multiple banks. The advice is hard-won – he's made the mistakes so you don't have to.
You'll also find him addressing something I've been banging on about for years: the shift from manufacturing to distribution in banking, the rise of platforms and ecosystems, and the reality that future customers won't "open a banking app" – they'll interact with AI agents that seamlessly orchestrate their financial lives across multiple providers. Pål gets this. His vision of what he calls "coreless banking" aligns beautifully with where the industry needs to go, but crucially, he shows you the bridge between today's monolithic reality and tomorrow's composable future.
I should warn you, though – this isn't a comfortable read if you're looking for validation that your current approach is fine. Pål, like me, doesn't believe in sugar-coating the situation. If your bank is still treating digital transformation as an IT project rather than a business transformation, you're going to fail. If you're still thinking you can buy your way out of technical debt with one vendor's "integrated suite," you're going to be disappointed. If you're planning a big bang core replacement without proper discovery, architecture, and phased delivery, I'd suggest you start updating your CV now.
But if you're ready to think differently, to embrace the hard work of proper transformation, and to approach modernisation as a journey rather than a destination, then this book is your roadmap. Pål has done what few authors in this space manage – he's made a deeply technical subject accessible without dumbing it down, and he's provided practical guidance without pretending there are easy answers.
I've known many consultants and architects over the years who can talk a good game about transformation. Pål is one of the few who's actually delivered it, repeatedly, and learned from both the successes and the failures. His experience shows on every page.
The banking industry stands at an inflection point. The pace of technological change – AI, quantum computing, agentic systems, embedded finance – is accelerating beyond what most banks are prepared for. Legacy systems that have been "good enough" for decades are suddenly becoming existential threats. The gap between digital leaders and laggards is widening. And customers, frankly, don't care about your technical debt. They just know that some banks can issue them a digital card in minutes while others still require them to wait a week for plastic in the mail.
This book won't make transformation easy – nothing can do that. But it will make it possible, which is infinitely more valuable. It will help you avoid the common pitfalls. It will give you a framework for thinking strategically about modernisation. And it will remind you that sometimes the best way to understand complex systems is to think about something as simple as a flooded kitchen.
I'm just saying that if you're serious about transforming your bank's core systems, you need to read this book. Not because Pål has all the answers – no one does – but because he's asking the right questions and sharing the hard-won wisdom from actually doing the work. That's worth far more than another PowerPoint deck full of aspirational architecture diagrams that bear no resemblance to the messy reality of banking transformation.
As banks move toward the platform-enabled, agent-driven future that both Pål and I advocate for, this book provides the practical bridge between vision and execution. It's about time someone wrote it. Great work my friend.
Darmesh Mistry – Banking and Technology Advisor
