WHY SOLID
The difference is structural
A side-by-side comparison of the practical difference between Solid and legacy or ERP-based core banking platforms — capability by capability.
Architecture
Purpose-built microservices
Built as independent microservices from the ground up — not layered on top of an ERP system. Each service owns its data and scales independently, enabling targeted updates without system-wide risk.
Monolith or ERP-extended
Often extend monolithic ERP frameworks, inheriting their constraints around deployment, data coupling, and upgrade cycles.
Targeted updates without system-wide risk — no coordinating across the whole platform.
Processing
Real-time, zero batch
Every transaction, balance update, and compliance check executes in real time — no overnight batch windows, no reconciliation delays. Interest, fees, and invoicing are calculated just-in-time.
Batch / end-of-day
Typically rely on scheduled batch runs, creating stale data and regulatory blind spots between processing cycles.
No stale data, no reconciliation delays — every number is current as it happens.
Performance
Sub-second latency, auto-scaling
Cloud-native microservices scale horizontally with demand, delivering consistent sub-second response times under any load.
Hardware-bound, vertical scaling
Constrained by monolithic architectures that require vertical scaling — adding more powerful hardware rather than more instances — leading to performance degradation during peak volumes and roughly four times higher infrastructure costs.
Consistent performance under any load, with infrastructure cost that scales with traffic.
Infrastructure
Cloud-native from day one
Auto-scaling, containerised deployments, and infrastructure-as-code. No on-premise lineage to maintain.
Cloud-hosted legacy
Originally designed for on-premise or static-capacity hosting. May run in the cloud, but elasticity is limited, driving up operational overhead.
Elasticity and DR are built in, not a second budget line.
Compliance
Configurable and future-ready
Compliance is part of the platform model from day one, so new requirement types can be added quickly, monitored continuously, and followed up operationally without core rewrites.
Bolted-on modules
Often bolt on compliance modules later, which slows change cycles and fragments visibility across tools.
New requirements land as configuration, not as project plans.
Vendor dependency
No vendor lock-in
Solid owns its full stack — there is no third-party platform underneath. Changes are isolated and deploy independently.
Tied to ERP ecosystem
Built on ERP systems like Microsoft Dynamics, inheriting that vendor's release cycle, licensing model, and proprietary tooling. A small change to the banking layer can cascade into an update of the underlying ERP, turning a one-week task into a multi-month project.
A change to banking stays in banking — no ERP project beneath it.
Total cost of ownership
Transparent & predictable
One transparent price — no per-user ERP licenses, no middleware fees, no hidden infrastructure surcharges. What you see is what you pay.
Complex licensing layers
Licensing, hosting, connectors, and consulting layered into an opaque total cost that grows with every new module.
No hidden cost layers — total cost is visible from the start.
Extensibility
Plug-in API modules
New payment rails, product types, or integrations plug in through well-defined APIs without modifying the core engine. Each module is versioned and deployable independently.
Customizations on ERP base
Customizations often require forking the base system, creating upgrade conflicts and long-term technical debt.
New rails and products ship without modifying the core engine.
Upgrades
Continuous delivery, zero downtime
Updates deploy continuously with zero-downtime rolling releases. No costly system upgrades, no migration weekends, and no version fragmentation across clients.
Scheduled release windows
Changes bundled into major releases that require planning, testing windows, and often downtime — slowing the pace of innovation.
The pace of change is set by the bank, not by release windows.
Audit trail
Immutable, real-time logs
Every transaction, configuration change, and access event is captured in an immutable, append-only log as it happens — providing full traceability for auditors and regulators.
Retroactive logging
Audit trails often reconstructed after the fact from disparate sources, creating gaps and inconsistencies that surface during regulatory reviews.
Auditors and regulators see one source of truth, current as of now.