Financial Services
M&T Bank
How We Helped M&T Bank Navigate a Complex Legacy System Replacement
M&T Bank is one of the largest commercial banks in the United States, offering financial solutions across retail, commercial, and institutional markets. With a long-standing reputation for service and stability, the bank is focused on modernizing its digital infrastructure to better serve evolving customer needs.
Challenge
M&T's business banking experience operated on Voyager: a legacy platform. When its vendor, FinServ, announced that it would discontinue support, M&T faced a mission-critical decision: modernize or risk operational vulnerabilities.
Approach
We joined the initiative as a strategic implementation partner, enabling a fast ramp-up. We provided skilled consultants to support the decommissioning effort and help M&T reimagine their digital banking experience from the ground up, acting like a true extension of their team. For the end-to-end implementation of Q2, we collaborated closely with M&T's cross-functional team to ensure that it would integrate seamlessly with their existing tools, minimizing disruptions and ensuring a smooth transition for them and their end users. Besides the technical rollout, we delivered structured change management and training support: we crafted clear stakeholder communications, thorough process documentation, and internal training for rapid adoption across the organization.
Results
Our consultants supported M&T Bank through a successful digital transformation, replacing the aging Voyager platform with Q2's modern, cloud-based solution. Throughout the project, we ensured alignment across IT, operations, and business teams—building a future-ready digital foundation that was technically sound, cost-efficient, and built for long-term agility.
Client Background
M&T Bank is one of the largest commercial banks in the United States, offering financial solutions across retail, commercial, and institutional markets. With a long-standing reputation for service and stability, the bank is focused on modernizing its digital infrastructure to better serve evolving customer needs.
The Challenge
M&T faced a high-stakes decision: replace a deeply integrated legacy system or risk operational vulnerabilities. But they encountered three major hurdles:
- Complexity: Voyager was deeply embedded in M&T Bank's operations, with cross-departmental dependencies extending across IT, operations, compliance, and business units, making the replacement technically and operationally challenging.
- Delays in vendor selection: Internal alignment and platform comparisons slowed down the transformation timeline. Unplugging the platform would require M&T to identify a scalable, future-ready solution, carefully plan the shift, and coordinate cross-functionally—with loads of patience.
- Over-reliance on external tools: High licensing costs and obsolete tech were holding them back.
They needed a partner who could adapt to shifting priorities without losing momentum, deliver technical excellence, and integrate seamlessly into their internal teams. That's where we came in.
The Solution
Our Approach:
We operated as an extension of the M&T team, steering the transition from Voyager to a modern, cloud-based digital banking platform.
Our first step was vendor selection. We conducted side-by-side assessments of multiple platforms. Leveraging a matrix of over 130 business use cases, our consultants contributed to the evaluation of multiple providers across scalability, security, user experience, and integration capabilities. After a thorough assessment, we identified the best option for flexibility and robust customization support.
Because the vendor selection for the Voyager replacement required more time, we temporarily shifted our focus to aid M&T in increasing agility and reducing infrastructure costs by replacing Tibco middleware with a modern, Spring Boot-based microservices framework. This allowed our client to build integrations using scalable, maintainable, API-first components.
We also delivered a change management strategy that included internal training programs, clear stakeholder communication, and operational documentation, smoothing adoption across business and technical teams.
Next, we tackled implementation and integration. We worked towards seamlessly embedding the selected solution within M&T's digital ecosystem. This included:
- Building secure integrations with core banking systems
- Developing batch processes to ensure real-time and overnight data synchronization
- Migrating historical and live data with validated mapping and transformation
Our Step-by-Step Process:
- Led the evaluation of multiple digital banking vendors
- Mapped platform capabilities to 130+ use cases
- Finalized the chosen solution as M&T's digital banking platform
- Replaced Tibco middleware with a Spring Boot-based microservices architecture, improving system performance and maintainability
- Built and deployed RESTful APIs to connect Q2 to various internal and third-party systems
- We helped with the migration of business banking data from Voyager to Q2
- Built batch data pipelines and integration APIs for real-time and overnight syncing
- Delivered change management support including training, documentation, and rollout communication
The Results
M&T transitioned from an aging legacy system to a scalable, modern digital banking environment—one that supports evolving business needs and enhances customer experience.
Amalgam's leadership and technical guidance helped the bank:
- Select and implement a future-ready digital banking platform (Q2)
- Modernize enterprise integration with open-source microservices
- Reduce dependency on high-cost middleware (Tibco)
- Improve system performance, flexibility, and scalability
- Facilitate data migration, integrity validation, and compliance
- Train internal teams and support cross-departmental adoption
Conclusions
Summary of Benefits
This wasn't a routine platform replacement: it was a complex and impactful enterprise-scale transformation. Amalgam provided the agility, technical depth, and strategic foresight M&T needed to modernize with confidence.
From vendor selection to data migration and change enablement, we helped M&T lay the foundation for a new era of digital banking.
Contact Information
Are you ready to leverage cutting-edge technology for your organization's needs? Contact us at hello@amalgam-inc.com.
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