Why is Key-Hole Surgery the Next Step in Real-Time Banking?

For years, instant payments in banking has been the ideal goal for efficiency in every market– a digital veneer over a slow-moving architectural core.

But as 2026 unfolds, the industry has hit a point of no return.

Global Payments’ 2026 Commerce and Payments Reports says that across all industry sectors and sizes, businesses are prioritising instant payments, investing in this technology more heavily than in two other rapidly expanding technologies.

Richard Ullenius, VP of Banking and Financial Services at CSG, highlights how banks can capitalise on real-time banking as demand for 24/7 payments increases. 

With the 2026-2027 transformation agenda looming, what does ‘real-time banking’ actually look like for a bank’s daily operations?

In corporate and commercial banking, real-time banking is often reduced to faster or instant payments. That’s a narrow view.

In reality, it’s a fundamental shift in how a bank operates.

It’s an operating model where data, workflows and decisions move faster – or at least at the same speed as the customer. 

That has profound implications day-to-day. Frontline teams are no longer forced to reconstruct information across systems.

Instead, they work with connected data and real-time business logic that informs decisions as they are being made.

Whether it’s a pricing deal, risk assessment or responding to a customer request, the bank operates as a coordinated system rather than a sequence of disconnected, manual steps. 

The most important shift is from reactive to pre-emptive. We’re starting to see leading banks anticipate needs, manage risk earlier and intervene before issues escalate. As a result, they’re becoming a more proactive partner to business customers

So, while real-time banking is often framed around speed, its real value lies in embedding intelligence and intent into every interaction across the bank. 

Why is layering modern tech on top of existing systems a better strategy than a full core replacement?

If real-time banking is an operating model and an almost cultural transformation, then the challenge becomes how to get there without breaking what already works. 

Full core replacements rarely deliver at the speed or certainty banks need.

They are complex, high-risk, multi-year programmes that often delay the creation of value for years. 

A layered approach is more aligned with how real transformation actually happens.

You leave core systems in place while data, orchestration and decisioning layers are introduced on top. 

This allows banks to activate real-time capabilities across functions such as product development, pricing, onboarding and servicing, without waiting for a complete rebuild.

It also makes time to value much shorter and less risky.

I often describe this as “keyhole surgery”. It’s targeted, faster and delivers measurable outcomes early, which builds confidence and momentum. 

If the goal is to operate in real time, then the transformation itself has to move in real time. 

How can banks stop acting like a collection of separate products – like lending and payments – and start acting as one single partner for the customer?

This is where real-time banking becomes tangible to the customer.

Customers don’t think in terms of lending, cash management, payments or treasury. They increasingly expect one relationship, one conversation and one coordinated bank. 

Internally, however, most banks are still organised around product silos, with disconnected data and workflows.

That fragmentation is what prevents real-time and holistic engagement. 

I’m not recommending that you collapse everything into a single system.

That’s simply unrealistic. Instead, it’s about connecting what already exists through a unified data and orchestration layer.

When data flows across product lines and workflows are aligned, the bank can behave as a single partner, even if the underlying architecture remains distributed.

Ultimately, this is both a structural and cultural shift, from selling products to solving customer problems across the entire relationship. 

Banks have plenty of data, but how do they actually get it to the frontline so staff can use it to help customers in the moment?

This is where we see most banks fall short. They have vast amounts of data, but they cannot transport, contextualise and present it in a way that’s usable at the point of interaction. 

Critical information is scattered across systems, formats and functions, often requiring manual effort to piece together, which sometimes can take weeks for big complex customers and deals.

That approach doesn’t work in a real-time environment. 

The solution is a layered approach that connects to data where it sits, transforms it in motion and delivers it contextually to the frontline based on role, need and entitlement.

When that happens, data becomes actionable, conversations become informed and banks can make decisions immediately, structuring deals in minutes instead of weeks.

Without that capability, real-time banking remains an aspiration rather than an operational reality. 

What is the biggest risk for a bank that stays product-led instead of becoming customer-centric?

The real risk is not that banks fall behind technologically, but that they hard-wire latency into their organisation. At that point, no amount of investment can compensate for the way decisions are made. 

Product-led organisations optimise within siloes, but customer-centric organisations operate across them at much higher pace and are, as a result, providing a superior customer experience

Neobanks and fintechs were built around continuous feedback and improvement loops, using data to adapt services in real time based on customer behaviour.

This structure means they run on self-correcting and improving systems. 

If traditional banks remain product-led, they will continue to improve individual components while competitors redefine the overall experience. 

Over the next two years, we’ll see the gap widen. Many banks will have the right technology in place, but decision latency and organisational design will hold them back. 

Real-time banking demands a customer-centric model. Without it, speed in one area is neutralised by friction in another.  

If you could give a bank CEO one piece of advice for their 2027 strategy, what would it be?

Don’t treat real-time banking as a technology programme. Treat it as a leadership and operation model decision.

Successful CEOs will own how decisions are made, how teams are incentivised and how accountability flows across the organisation.

The banks that will lead in 2027 are those that deliberately connect data, workflows and decisioning, supported by a human-machine model where AI augments, not replaces, the banker.

My advice is to start with intent and focus. Identify a small number of high-impact use cases where real-time data and decisioning can materially improve customer outcomes. Prove value quickly, then scale with confidence. 

At the same time, address the cultural shift. Moving from product-led to customer-centric is not incremental. It requires leaders to rethink incentives, accountability and decision-making. 

And finally, build on your strengths. Trust and scale remain powerful differentiators. The opportunity is to combine them with real-time intelligence to deliver experiences competitors cannot easily replicate. 

That’s what will define leadership in the next phase of banking.