Large banks are asking to postpone the transition to Russian system software

As Kommersant found out, a number of large Russian banks are asking to postpone requirements for the transition to Russian system software from 2025 to 2027. Credit institutions believe that domestic suppliers will not have time to adapt automated banking systems (ABS) to work with domestic database management systems (DBMS). Currently, the industry mainly uses the American Oracle DBMS. To solve the problem, a number of large banks are discussing the idea of ​​establishing a consortium that will issue a new core banking system within a few years.

According to Kommersant sources, on August 24, representatives of large banks (RSHB, Gazprombank, Promsvyazbank, VTB, Dom.RF) at a meeting at the Central Bank proposed postponing for two years the date of entry into force of the requirement that subjects of critical information infrastructure ( CII, which in addition to financial organizations includes telecom operators and a number of other organizations) must stop using foreign software from January 1, 2025. Kommersant has a copy of the invitation to the meeting.

The Central Bank told Kommersant that it is discussing with market participants current issues of import substitution, including the deadline for the transition to domestic solutions by January 1, 2025, established by presidential decrees. On March 30, 2022, Vladimir Putin signed decree No. 166, which introduces a number of requirements for ensuring the cybersecurity of CII. In particular, from March 31, 2022, CII subjects were prohibited from government procurement of foreign software and foreign software and hardware systems (SHC), and from January 1, 2025, the use of foreign software on “significant objects of critical information infrastructure.”

As a Kommersant source explains, now domestic automated banking systems (ABS) are adapted to work with foreign system software, primarily DBMS from Oracle. Adaptation to domestic DBMS, for example Postgres, “will take a long time and require large investments,” since “in fact, the core banking system will need to be rewritten from scratch.” The delay is required so that Russian ABS suppliers develop software to work with domestic DBMS.

According to TAdviser, at the end of 2022, the largest Russian core banking vendors in terms of the number of product implementations are Diasoft (50% of implementations), R-Style Softlab (25%) and the Center for Financial Technologies (12.5%). The companies did not answer Kommersant.

However, a number of banks are considering an alternative solution to the problem. Kommersant’s interlocutor in the IT market says that, in particular, VTB, RSHB and Dom.RF are discussing the possibility of establishing a consortium that, in a few years, will prepare a new core banking system for working with Russian DBMS.

A source in one of the banks clarified that the idea to establish a consortium of banks appeared about six months ago: “The initiator was VTB – the bank at first planned to independently develop an ABS, but then they realized that the project was too large-scale and expensive.” Dom.RF declined to comment; VTB, Gazprombank, RSHB, Promsvyazbank and the Central Bank did not respond to requests about the consortium.

“The development of ABS is a complex process that requires high technical expertise. The consortium must have sufficient knowledge and resources to successfully develop, test and implement the system. Lack of experience or non-compliance with requirements can cause delays and problems in the quality of the developed ABS,” says Ekaterina Podarueva, head of the QA department at SimbirSoft.

Director of Strategy and Technology Development at Axiom JDK, Roman Karpov, calls the idea of ​​establishing a consortium for the development of ABS a “dangerous path”, since banks do not have expertise in developing complex system products like a DBMS: “In conditions of personnel shortage, it is quickly impossible to recruit a team for this, unless lure developers away from domestic vendors, in which case we will deprive other industries of the opportunity to use existing solutions.”

Nikita Korolev, Yulia Poslavskaya