Coreless Banking in Canada: Meeting the Open Banking Mandate

The Canadian Open Banking Mandate: A Defining Moment

Canada’s financial sector is on the brink of a transformative era. With the 2025 open banking mandate fast approaching, Canadian financial institutions face both a regulatory imperative and a generational opportunity. Open banking is set to reshape how banks interact with customers, partners, and the broader financial ecosystem—unlocking new business models, enhancing customer experiences, and driving innovation. Yet, the journey to compliance and competitive advantage is complex, especially for institutions burdened by legacy core systems.

The Regulatory Landscape: Unique Canadian Challenges

Canada’s open banking framework is designed to empower consumers with greater control over their financial data, foster competition, and spur innovation. The Canadian approach is characterized by a strong emphasis on security, privacy, and interoperability. Banks must enable secure data sharing and seamless integration with third-party providers, while ensuring robust compliance with evolving regulatory standards. The 2025 deadline is non-negotiable—institutions must modernize their technology stacks, streamline data access, and implement secure APIs, all while maintaining operational resilience and customer trust. Failure to comply risks regulatory scrutiny, reputational damage, and loss of market share to more agile competitors.

The Opportunity: Beyond Compliance

While the open banking mandate is a regulatory requirement, it is also a catalyst for broader digital transformation. By embracing open banking, Canadian banks can:

Enhance customer experience: Deliver personalized, omnichannel services that meet the expectations of digital-native consumers.
Unlock new business models: Collaborate with fintechs and ecosystem partners to offer innovative products and services.
Drive operational efficiency: Streamline processes, reduce costs, and accelerate time-to-market for new offerings.
Leverage data for growth: Gain richer insights into customer needs and behaviors, enabling smarter decision-making and targeted engagement.

The Challenge: Legacy Core Systems

Despite the promise of open banking, many Canadian institutions are held back by aging, monolithic core banking systems. These legacy platforms are costly to maintain, difficult to integrate, and ill-suited to the demands of real-time data sharing and rapid product innovation. The risk of failed modernization—whether due to technical, regulatory, or operational missteps—is significant.

Coreless Banking: The Modernization Imperative

Coreless banking offers a way forward. By decoupling critical banking functions from the legacy core and adopting a modular, cloud-native architecture, banks can achieve the agility, scalability, and resilience required for open banking. This approach enables institutions to:

Modernize at their own pace: Migrate functions incrementally, reducing risk and disruption.
Integrate seamlessly with partners: Leverage APIs and microservices to connect with fintechs, payment providers, and other ecosystem players.
Accelerate innovation: Launch new products and services faster, responding to changing customer needs and regulatory requirements.

Sapient Slingshot: Accelerating Coreless Banking in Canada

Publicis Sapient’s proprietary AI platform, Sapient Slingshot, is purpose-built to de-risk and accelerate core modernization. Slingshot automates and streamlines the software development lifecycle—from code generation and testing to deployment and maintenance—enabling Canadian banks to:

Upgrade legacy systems with confidence: Reduce technical debt and future-proof infrastructure.
Achieve up to 99% code-to-spec accuracy: Deliver high-quality, reliable software that meets regulatory and business requirements.
Shorten time-to-market: Enable development cycles in days, not months, so banks can meet the 2025 mandate and stay ahead of competitors.
Free up teams to innovate: Automate repetitive tasks, allowing talent to focus on customer-centric innovation and value creation.

Local Expertise, Proven Methodologies

Publicis Sapient brings deep experience in Canadian financial services, combining local regulatory insight with global best practices. Our approach is grounded in:

Strategy & Consulting: Translating regulatory requirements and business ambitions into actionable transformation plans.
Customer Experience & Design: Creating seamless, personalized experiences that delight Canadian consumers.
Technology & Engineering: Building scalable, secure platforms that enable open banking and future growth.
Data & Artificial Intelligence: Unlocking the value of data for smarter decision-making and personalized engagement.
Product Management: Accelerating the delivery of new, customer-centric products and services.

De-Risking Modernization: A Step-by-Step Approach

Modernizing the core is a complex, high-stakes endeavor. Publicis Sapient’s playbook for Canadian banks emphasizes:

Risk identification and mitigation: Addressing technical, regulatory, reputational, and planning risks early and systematically.
Fit-for-purpose governance: Evolving governance structures to support both centralized planning and agile, decentralized delivery.
Migration-first strategies: Prioritizing safe, incremental migration to new platforms, with coexistence models to ensure business continuity.
Automated controls: Embedding real-time, data-driven monitoring and compliance into every stage of the transformation.
Talent and change management: Upskilling teams and fostering a culture of continuous learning and innovation.

Real-World Impact: Unlocking Value for Canadian Banks

By partnering with Publicis Sapient and leveraging Sapient Slingshot, Canadian financial institutions can:

Achieve open banking compliance by 2025—with confidence and minimal disruption.
Deliver superior customer experiences that drive loyalty and growth.
Unlock new revenue streams through ecosystem partnerships and data-driven innovation.
Reduce operational costs and technical debt, freeing resources for strategic initiatives.

Ready for the Future of Banking

The open banking mandate is more than a compliance challenge—it is a launchpad for the next era of Canadian financial services. With coreless banking, Sapient Slingshot, and Publicis Sapient’s local expertise, Canadian banks can not only meet regulatory requirements but also lead the market in customer experience, innovation, and growth.

Let’s build the future of Canadian banking—together.

Ready to start your coreless banking journey? Connect with our Canadian financial services experts today.