ING's bold leap into the future: Building a global, cloud-based financial messaging system with Elastic

ING Group, a major global banking corporation based in the Netherlands, is transitioning from its aging COBOL-based financial messaging system to a new cloud-based platform using Elastic technology to stay competitive and meet evolving industry standards. The legacy system, which handles 1.5 million financial messages daily across 200 formats, is becoming obsolete due to declining COBOL expertise and fintech competition. ING's Belgian branch is spearheading the development of this new system, which leverages the Elastic Stack for scalability, enhanced performance monitoring, and compliance with data retention regulations. Elastic's tools, such as Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Elastic APM, are integral to ensuring the new system's reliability and compatibility with the existing platform, providing ING with the flexibility to navigate future industry changes confidently. The strategic use of Elastic aims to future-proof ING’s financial messaging capabilities by enabling efficient transaction processing, compliance, and system integrity in a rapidly evolving financial landscape.