August 5, 2026

Innovating Beyond the Legacy Core: Revolution Banking and Retail Forum Mexico

By Paulo Do Nascimento, Head of LATAM Sales, Personetics

The Revolution Banking and Retail Forum in Mexico City recently brought together financial industry leaders to discuss the future of digital transformation in Latin America. I had the privilege of speaking on a panel alongside industry experts Tania Perez Castro, Executive Director of Transformation Technology at Grupo Financiero Banorte; Jonathan Arenas Garcia, Subdirector of Strategy for Digital Activations at Actinver; and Abdala Pineda, Director of Digital Strategy and Growth at Bancoppel.

Our session, “Innovating Beyond the Core: Expanding Capabilities Without Disrupting Legacy Systems,” tackled one of the most pressing issues in banking today. Modernizing the core is no longer optional; it is now table stakes as banks continue to digitize and adopt new capabilities for customers. However, modernizing without shutting down the bank requires a careful, controlled transition.

During the panel, we discussed how banks can successfully evolve from a monolith to an agile and scalable core. This transformation relies on progressive strategies such as the strangler pattern, modular coexistence, APIs, and real-time events, to reduce risk while accelerating value. We also explored the deep organizational changes required, including making GenAI coexist with legacy systems and shifting governance and funding models from CAPEX to OPEX with value metrics. The panel unpacked several major themes centered around legacy transformation.

Innovating Without Disrupting Operations

Many financial institutions talk about modernization, but few can afford to completely replace their legacy systems. To innovate without operational disruption, banks must bring their future vision into the present by first mapping and understanding the current infrastructure. This investment will define the gap between the current systems and the end result they hope to achieve.

With a clear vision of where they are and where they want to be, institutions must align project requirements and their dependencies with the long-term vision. This includes knowing what to prioritize and when to let go. Letting go can be a difficult part of the process, but it is crucial to maintaining operations while expanding the bank’s capabilities.

Navigating the Biggest Transformation Challenges

The hurdles in digital transformation go far beyond technology. Panelists highlighted several major challenges, including managing the historical knowledge of legacy systems and understanding transformation dependencies across current and future projects. These obstacles emphasize the need for banking leaders to have a comprehensive understanding of the systems they are updating.

Additionally, strict industry regulations and persistent operational demands prevent banks from slowing down to upgrade. Adhering to these requirements is unavoidable in the banking industry, and organizations therefore must figure out how to work within these boundaries rather than against them.

Above all, panelists agreed that successful change management requires strong vision, culture, and sponsorship. Banking leaders who uphold these advantages will succeed in innovating their core despite the challenges outlined.

Separating Operations from Transformation Speed

In order for banks to continue delivering results while modernizing their infrastructure, banks must decouple operations from the speed of the organization’s transformation. On the panel, we discussed how banks can do that.

Teams must leverage experience and well-founded opinions, which can mean being “scrappy” and actively looking for direction. Banking leaders must ensure that the loudest voices on their teams are those with evidence to back up their claims.

Most importantly, banks need to turn the problem upside down and look at it directly from the customers’ needs. Flipping the point of view will align the bank with how the customer experiences their product, allowing them to solve problems they might not catch from their own perspective.

Putting the Customer First

The final point above, focusing on customer needs, is at the heart of what we do at Personetics. Instead of waiting for a multi-year core transformation to finish before delivering new value, banks can leverage APIs and contextual data to layer intelligent, AI-driven personalization over their existing infrastructure. This allows institutions to drive engagement and increase customer lifetime value while core modernization happens securely in the background.

It was an inspiring event, with many valuable insights and takeaways from the sessions. The conversation during our panel confirmed that agile, customer-centric innovation, while challenging, is essential across the LATAM banking sector.