Halyk Bank and Sunline Examine the Next Stage of Core Banking Modernization

Senior technology leaders from Halyk Bank, Kazakhstan’s largest bank, met with Sunline in Shenzhen recently to examine one of the most pressing questions facing large financial institutions today: how to modernize mission-critical core platforms without compromising resilience, continuity or future flexibility.

Halyk Bank delegation with Sunline Chairman Wang and expert team at Sunline’s Shenzhen headquarters alongside Huawei.

The engagement brought together Sunline Chairman Wang, senior technology and delivery leaders, together with representatives from Huawei. The agenda covered core banking architecture, resilient financial infrastructure, digital ecosystems and the expanding role of AI across banking technology.

It followed earlier exchanges during HUAWEI CONNECT 2026. The Halyk Bank delegation also visited the Suzhou R&D Center of Bank of Shanghai, a Sunline customer, to gain first-hand insight into how a major Chinese commercial bank is advancing its technology architecture, engineering capabilities and digital transformation.

Halyk Bank delegation visiting the Bank of Shanghai Suzhou R&D Center.

Core modernization is becoming an enterprise architecture challenge

For large banks still operating on legacy core systems, modernization is no longer simply a platform replacement exercise. Cloud-native technologies, distributed architecture, data platforms and AI are becoming more deeply embedded in mission-critical environments. This is expanding the scope of modernization across transaction processing, integration, data and infrastructure.

Sunline drew on experience from large-scale transformation programs to illustrate how banks can evolve complex legacy environments while protecting transaction stability and business continuity. The exchange brought several priorities into focus: architectural scalability, resilience, openness, change velocity and the ability to introduce new products without adding operational complexity.

Huawei added an infrastructure perspective, highlighting how underlying technology environments can evolve in step with core applications to support greater resilience and performance.

Proven in complex international banking environments

Across Southeast Asia, Sunline has delivered programs spanning legacy core replacement, distributed architecture transformation, cloud-native core implementation and the modernization of highly integrated banking environments.

In the Philippines, Sunline supported a financial institution in replacing its legacy core platform with a next-generation banking environment covering customer management, deposits, lending, accounting, operational reporting and enterprise integration. The program required coordinated execution across data migration, surrounding-system integration, business continuity, performance validation, production cutover and post-go-live stabilization.

In Thailand and other international markets, Sunline has also supported banks in evolving their core architecture through distributed and cloud-native technologies, with an emphasis on resilience, scalability and faster release cycles.

These projects have strengthened our implementation methodology across different regulatory, operating and technology environments. Large banks rarely modernize against a standard blueprint. Each transformation has to account for the institution’s existing architecture, operating model, risk controls and pace of change.

From product deployment to transformation execution

The complexity of large-scale banking modernization extends well beyond the core platform itself. Successful delivery depends on architecture, integration, migration, governance, localization and execution discipline working together throughout the transformation lifecycle.

Sunline has continued to strengthen these capabilities across international markets, combining core banking expertise with local delivery, engineering rigor and cross-market implementation experience. This has become increasingly important as financial institutions move from isolated system upgrades toward broader, multi-year modernization programs.

Building for continuous change

The role of the core is changing. Banks increasingly need platforms that can support continuous product innovation, real-time data use, ecosystem integration and AI-enabled services without compromising operational stability.

The engagement with Halyk Bank reflected that shift and the growing importance of modernization strategies that balance architectural change with execution risk.

Sunline will continue to advance its work across core banking, digital banking, data and AI, supporting financial institutions as they modernize critical platforms and build technology environments designed for resilience, adaptability and continuous change.