How to Maximize Your Community Bank’s Core Capabilities

Four years after converting from a 42-year legacy core, Community Spirit Bank is still unearthing new capabilities provided by its vendor, CSI.

“It’s like an iPhone,” says Emily Mays, vice president and chief administrative officer for the $220 million-asset community bank in Red Bay, Alabama. “I’m sure I’m not taking full advantage of my iPhone, because there’s just so much it can do.”

No matter how difficult or time-consuming it is, grasping the range of capabilities you’ve purchased is critical. In fact, one of the best ways for bankers seeking to improve overall efficiency is “to optimize the use of existing solutions,” says Jonathan Baltzell, president of Banking Solutions at Jack Henry & Associates. From experience, he estimates that “most financial institutions use just 50% of the functionality available to them through their cores …. They’re utilizing a lot less than you’d think.”

Baltzell acknowledges that staying on top of a core’s capabilities is an ever-growing challenge, because cores are always expanding their functionality. In addition, solutions are increasingly fragmented as the ecosystem of external providers grows. 

“Sometimes, it’s hard to know where your core stops and another solution picks up,” he says. “It all gets murky very quickly.”

The good news is that there are plenty of ways for community bankers to delve more deeply into the choices available through their core relationship.

How Can Banks Stay on Top of Core Functionality?

David P. Barksdale, CEO of $1.3 billion-asset Piedmont Federal Bank in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has gotten to know each of the major core providers from roles he’s held at various institutions. 

“I’ve never found anyone who says, ‘We have absolutely everything we need from our core,’” he says. “There’s always a love-hate relationship with your core, and it happens with each of them.” 

One problem is that executives often lack the technological literacy to understand the breadth of offerings out there. “I can’t read a release note any more than I can read Mandarin Chinese,” jokes Barksdale. “But our team can and does read them.”

While staying up-to-date via release notes is an excellent way to keep informed of new capabilities, the best way to match capabilities with a community bank’s unique circumstances is arguably the optimization review, says Dudley White, head of core account processing solutions at Fiserv.

White says individuals from Fiserv Academy, a program that offers various online training and advisory services on maximizing clients’ technology investment, will visit a financial institution to perform such a review, beginning with a week of observation and concluding with a list of detailed recommendations.

He encourages bankers to think of an optimization review as a type of “hygiene” for getting the most out of a core. He recommends engaging in an optimization process at least once every two years.

Finally, user conferences and other intrabank informational exchanges can lead to new insights into how to get more from a core.

Community Spirit Bank’s Mays says conversations with fellow bankers proved key in establishing the right policies and customer agreements before her bank turned on new core capabilities like remote deposit capture and Positive Pay.

Barksdale is also a staunch advocate of speaking with people from other community banks that use the same core, as well as those that use competing cores.

How to Build a Strong Core Vendor Relationship

The strength of a bank’s relationship with its core vendor likely determines how well informed it will be about the core’s capabilities.

To this end, Barksdale advises going beyond conversations with the bank’s designated relationship manager and taking the time to get to know members of both the executive and consulting teams at the core provider.

Having renegotiated his Fiserv contract twice in the past six years, Barksdale met with Fiserv again in early 2026 over Zoom to ensure his bank got everything it needed during renewal. He compares these continuing conversations with shopping for the perfect automobile. 

“We don’t need snow traction if we live in Florida, but we might need a sunroof,” he says.

As with any successful relationship, Barksdale makes sure that his communications with Fiserv are open and proactive. “We share our strategy document with our core,” he says. “We say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing, and here’s where we’re going.’ And then we ask, ‘Can you help us get there?’” Often, we find that they have capabilities we didn’t know about.”

Will Your Bank Need a Core Conversion in the Future?

Almost every banker fears the havoc that a core conversion could cause. And yet neither Barksdale nor Mays would rule out a future conversion should costs with the current providers become prohibitive, customer support decline in quality or some enticing strategic possibility be out of reach because their current providers don’t offer capabilities available elsewhere.

The scenario both want to avoid is embarking upon a painful change because they failed to explore all that their current core provider could accomplish.

Both Barksdale and Mays emphasize that investigating the full range of capabilities on offer by their core providers is a gigantic task, but it’s one that can’t be ignored.

In the end, Mays welcomes the work of studying periodic release notes and attending user conferences because, as she says, it’s a “form of insurance that we won’t have to undergo another core conversion any time soon.”

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