Top Four IT Challenges in Financial Services: What You Need to Know

Running an IT estate for the financial services industry? Make sure to steer clear of these four tech blockers. 

These last 18 months have proven difficult for financial services technology pros and the teams they support. Common IT challenges in the industry — like the ongoing need to modernize — remain a constant concern. Meanwhile, external pressures ranging from a shaky economy to headline-grabbing systems outages — including the CrowdStrike-related disruption in 2024, a Fiserv outage in May 2025, and a July 2025 cyberattack on Brazil’s C&M Software — haven’t made things any easier.

IT leaders keep moving forward in uncertain times by focusing their efforts on issues they can control. In an industry where costs are always a point of scrutiny, financial institutions are on the hunt for solutions that allow them to get more use from their current technology without slowing modernization efforts. That process starts with addressing issues that make your on-premises software too costly or technically difficult to keep active.   

Challenge 1: Achieving better TCO from current software  

When they bought their perpetually licensed software years back, banks and financial services companies justified the upfront costs based on the low TCO they would realize as they continued to use the products. Today, those same institutions often struggle to achieve that outcome due to several factors, including:  

• Escalating vendor software support costs. Support renewal costs go up with every new agreement and typically offer less in terms of coverage as time goes on, until eventually no support is available at any price. However, keeping active support is also a necessity (and, in many cases, a regulatory requirement). This leads many institutions to think paying more and constantly upgrading are the only options.  

• Difficulty and expense of achieving interoperability. Financial institutions spend significant chunks of their IT budgets maintaining current software and preparing established systems to work alongside newly introduced software.  As with support costs, the lack of apparent options leads organizations to believe they must keep spending.    

• Software license audits and associated costs. Software license audits are a fact of life when financial institutions purchase software from megavendors like IBM. The associated costs can quickly drive up the total cost of owning on-premises solutions.   

Risk-averse by nature, the financial industry treats every penny saved or recovered — especially in today’s economic climate — as a victory. It’s fair to say most would be happy to continue using the software they have if keeping it stable, supported, and maintained wasn’t just as challenging and costly as moving to an alternative — a blocker that is easier to avoid than many institutions might realize.  

Challenge 2: Sidestepping forced upgrades without stunting digital transformation 

Going without support isn’t an option for the software financial institutions rely on. When their current software moves to end-of-support (EOS) status, organizations often feel forced to surrender their current version just to make sure they have someone to call when things go wrong.  

Whether an individual product’s rollover to EOS is known in advance or it comes as a total surprise, like when Broadcom stripped VMware® software support from thousands of perpetually licensed products. Planning a viable response before the end of the current support agreement creates serious time constraints. It can also slow digital transformation plans by forcing customers into technology upgrade tracks that run contrary to their plans. 

When support is nonnegotiable, agreeing to unwanted upgrades that disrupt the IT roadmap feels like another unavoidable challenge. But forced upgrades and spiking support renewal costs can be overcome by exploring support agreements beyond the typical terms software megavendors offer.  

Challenge 3: Finding the right people despite a widening skills gap 

Above-average reliance on existing technology and the need for constant uptime make financial institutions uniquely vulnerable to the ongoing IT skills gap. Supporting current operations, integrating common digital transformation projects like AI, and maintaining deeply integrated perpetually licensed software all require unique skill sets that can span generations. However, most new graduates aren’t coming out of university with deep mainframe experience. 

Challenge 4: Maintaining Security on Legacy Systems

Security is under constant scrutiny in financial services — especially as systems age and become harder to maintain. When vendor support ends, so does access to routine patches and official vulnerability disclosures, putting added pressure on internal teams to monitor risks and defend critical applications themselves.

But the alternative isn’t simple either. Upgrading to a newer version just to stay on a support track can pull resources away from modernization priorities, especially when the newer version doesn’t align with your current roadmap. Institutions are forced to weigh the cost of risk against the cost of disruption.

As aging infrastructure continues powering essential functions across financial services, maintaining a strong security posture without defaulting to forced upgrades or vendor-led timelines is becoming one of the most persistent IT challenges in the sector.

A solution to finance’s mission-critical IT challenges

Origina helps financial institutions maximize the value of existing software investments while maintaining agility in digital transformation. Our unique approach helps companies keep their current software active and secure—without overcommitting funds or resources to maintenance, security, or forced upgrades.

• Trusted ongoing support for IBM®, VMware®, and HCL® software. Origina acts as your primary maintenance and support provider, delivering tailored, expert assistance that covers both current and end-of-support (EOS) software versions.
• Freedom from forced upgrades. Origina enables continued use of EOS software with full support for as long as needed, avoiding costly upgrade cycles until your business is ready. Our teams also optimize interoperability, helping your perpetually licensed products coexist seamlessly with newer software introduced elsewhere in your IT estate.
• Deep software expertise. Origina’s engineers bring decades of experience supporting complex financial services environments. This hard-to-find knowledge ensures you have the right skills to maintain even legacy software versions critical to your operations.
• Security-aligned guidance and proactive risk management. Our experts provide ongoing vulnerability insights and actionable recommendations tailored to your software versions — helping you strengthen your security posture without the pressure to upgrade prematurely.

Financial organizations that reduce unnecessary legacy software spending while preserving transformation momentum and service quality position themselves for greater resilience and success. Origina is here to help you achieve that balance.

Want to learn more? 

Our e-book, “Future-Proof Banking and Financial Services IT: Navigating Enterprise Software Roadmap Complexities,” explores the challenges financial institutions face in handling software megavendors. It provides proven strategies to lower your IT spend without sacrificing innovation.  

Avoid software megavendor tactics that keep financial institutions overspending. Download the e-book.