Hello everyone. My name is Raju and I bring over 18 years of specialized exp experience in mainframe based core banking systems with deep expertise in systematics and vision plus products. Throughout my career, I have worked ex extensively on core banking modernization, credit card processing, large scale conversions, and high availability production support across major financial institutions. My background includes leading end-to-end modernization initiatives, designing scalable mainframe to cloud integrations and delivering complex migration programs. Experience that directly aligns with today's theme of decoupling legacy banking, modular core strategies that drive speed, scale, and innovation. With this background, I'm excited to walk you through the presentation on how modular core strategies microservices API, firsted design, doing driven architectures and phased migration can significantly enhance agility, reside, and long-term growth for financial institutions. The. Where innovation goes to die. So the biggest challenge for most banks is the overwhelming dependency on the legacy systems. These systems were built decades ago, and while they are served the industry well, they have become extremely. Costly and rigid. A large portion of the IT budgets is sometimes 60 to 80% is spent just keeping the systems running. That means very little funding is left for innovation or digital transformations. Legacy architectures also slow down time to market. Slow down time. Slow down time to market. Every simple changes requires long testing cycles, and carries high risk. Traditional banks ends up innovating at a much slower rate compared to a digital native companies. They simply can't move fast enough. To compete in a world where new fintechs are introducing products every few weeks, legacy based banks are often stuck with release cycles of months or even years. So the legacy systems becomes more than a technical burden. It becomes a strategic burden that limits long-term good. To address these problems, we conducted extensive research across global institutions, the research foundation. Our analysis, not theoretical, it's grounded in global research involving financial institutions across multiple countries. We studied their modernization journeys, evaluated performance metrics, and tracked the transformational outcomes over several years. Like evidence showed a clear pattern. Institutions that adopted modular architectures outperformed those that did. We measured speed. Cost efficiency, innovation, output, digital adoption, and customer experience improvements. These insights from this research from the foundation for the strategies and outcomes I'll share today. Now, let's look at what happens when banks move from monolithic to modular architecture. Legacy systems are typically monolith. So this means everything is tightly coupled. Core banking, payments, customers, accounts, customer accounts, card systems, and more like because everything is interdependent. A change in one component often requires updates across the entire system. That increases risk and slows deployment. So modular outreaches breakdown this monolith into separate, confidential services. Each module handles its own business capability and can be updated independently. This approach enables flexibility. Banks can adapt to new technologies without rewriting the whole system. It also enhances reside issues in one area. Don't bring down the entire core system overall. Mod modularization of transforms overall modularization of. Transforms the way teams works, or sorry, speeding up delivery and reducing dependencies. This shift directly improves deployment and speed and innovation velocity. Deployment velocity deployment velocity is one of the most significant benefits of modular architectures like the traditional banks release updates infrequently, sometimes once per quarter or even once per year. Also without modularization and mo microservices releases cycles shrink dramatically. Like teams can push updates weekly or even daily. Frequent deployments mean faster response to customer needs, regulatory changes, and market dynamics. It also encourages experimentation. Banks can test new features on smaller customer groups, gather feedback and it rate some things that legacy system make nearly impossible. Faster deployment, faster innovation, high, higher competitiveness. They all are. Improve speed also translate. From a financial perspective modernization pay off in several ways. First, total cost of ownership reduces gradually. Banks less spends less on maintenance infrastructure and vendors purport. Second time to market improves, allowing banks to launch new products faster and capture market opportunities before competitors. Third, which modular systems, multiple teams can work in parallel. This reduces project timelines and operational bottlenecks. Fourth, optimized testing and automation, reduce operational overhead and increases reliability when combined. These outcomes delivers millions in a cost savings and create room for new revenue streams. Let's look at the strategies that successful institutions adopt to modernize their banks. There are four strategic pillars that consistently produce successful modernization outcomes. First is strangler pattern In this pattern replaces legacy components in small increments. Instead of risky big bang migrations, the old system is gradually replaced while business operations continue. Uninterrupted domain driven designs. These are, this ensures that the technology structure reflects the business structure. Like clear domain boundaries allows team to own and evolve their models independently. API first development APIs access is standard communication layer, enabling seamless integration with partners, FinTech and internal systems. A PA fast banks innovate much faster and unlock new ecosystem. Opportunities, microservices, architecture, microservices allow fi, fine-grained scaling, flexible deployments, improved fault isolations. Each service evolves independently enabling more agility. These strategies aren't just theories, they translate into real operational invest improvements too. Operational ex excellence. Through decoupling dec decoupling systems results in major operational benefits. Reliability improves because failures are isolated. They no longer cascade across entire system. Integration defects reduce because APIs define clear contracts and expectations, like compliance becomes faster and simpler. Modular systems require smaller audit scopes and easier traceability. When operation stabilizes team can focus less on firefighting and more on innovation and modernizing impacts more than operations. It directly drives revenues, revenue, and market impact. Modernized banks significantly outperform legacy banks in revenue growth. They introduce innovative products such as digital banking, instant payments, personalized offers much faster. This attracts a larger share of digital customer, first customers who are fast growing customer segment. The customer acquisition cost goes down while customer satisfaction goes up. So the difference in this competitiveness between modernized and non modernized becomes more obvious year after year. So the questions most leader ask is, does modernization deliver long term ROIs? The answer is yes. That is returns on the investment. The business case modernization. Del was strong, ROI, particularly over three to five years of period because savings come from reduced maintenance, lower infrastructure costs, and optimized workflows. New revenues come from digital pro product. API partnerships and expanded market offerings. Most banks recover their investments faster than expected because operational savings accumulate quickly and new capabilities and partners are added. The return continues to grow exponentially, but modernization does come with such challenges and it is important to manage them pro proactively. There are four core challenges institutions face during the modernization. First is organizational resistance. People resist change due to fear of description, skill gaps or uncertainty. Strong communication, leadership, sponsorship and visible quick help build trust, regulatory constraints. Banks must comply with strict. Regulatory frameworks, so early engagement with regulators and detailed documentations help reduces compliance risk, technical complexity, legacy system often lacks documentations and have deeply intervened logics. So to overcome this we should have clear architecture, governance, phased migrations, skill, developmental residential, clear documentations is re required. Budget. Budget limitations. Modernizations are expensive. We know that. But phased execution and re reinvesting the savings make it more sustainable. With the right foundations, banks can unlock new innovation potential. API driven ecosystem advantage. API driven ecosystems are now central to modern banking. Like APIs allows banks to collaborate quickly with fintechs, merchants, government services and technology partners. This means back can add new capabilities like digital kc KYC, or loyalty programs or valids without modifying the code. So API also create better customer experiences by ensuring consistency across mobile, BA web branch and call center channels. So this ecosystem driven MO model is what enables modern banks to innovate rapidly. So to move towards this feature bank, future bank needs a clear and practical roadmap. Modernization roadmap. So a structured modernization roadmap helps ensure smooth execution. Assessment and strategy starts by analyzing current architecture, identify pain points, define business outcomes, and secure leadership alignment early. Validate, select a small non-critical domain to modernize. First, use this phase to build expertise establish processes and validate assumptions. Then scale and optimize. Expand modernization to core domains like lending, payments, and customer systems. Establish governance, automate testing, and refined deployment processes. Ecosystem expansion. This enables partners, integrations and build new digital product offerings. This is where the most significant innovations and revenue growth happens. Ultimately, modernization build banks that are ready for the future. Building innovation. Ready? Ready. Digital banks, the banking landscape is changing faster than ever, so customer's expectations are higher. Competition is tougher. Regulatory requirements are more complex. Legacy systems simply cannot support the speed and flexibility that modern banking requires. Model modular architectures unlocks agility. Improves efficiency enables come continuous digital innovations. With the right leadership and execution discipline, banks can transform themselves into the future Ready Digital organizations. The key is to start early, move decisively and embrace a long term vision. With that, I'd like to close this session. Thank you. Thank you for your time and attention. I hope this session helped clarify the modernization journey and the strategies that drive the successful outcomes. I'm happy to take any questions or discuss specific modernization challenges your organization might be facing.