Buy a half decade ago, regret the purchase still to this day?

Buried in Fidelity National Information Services’s (FIS) Q4 2012 earning results was an interesting nugget that addressed FI shopper’s remorse. In short, the core banking provider argued that FIs are still suffering regrets from bad technology decisions they made during better economic times.

“I mean, how are the banks going to survive in this space,” said Gary Norcross, chief operating officer, according to a transcript of the call. “I can assure you they will, but … there’s multiple pressures coming from every angle. A lot of banks in the large FI and in international markets are struggling with past decisions. When their profitability was growing, they really didn’t reconcile in their mind what [it] is my underlying solution architecture needs to be? How do I need to pull this together so I can deliver future value and compete? These past decisions are weighing very heavily.”

Norcross highlighted a recent visit he made to a large American bank to point to this problem more specifically. Though the bank wanted to “leverage and launch” its mobile solutions, he said it had made bad technology decisions over the past five years, which “was really a major impediment to do something as simple as launching mobile tablet in the marketplace and, therefore, they were struggling with how to retain their clients with that need.”

For FIS, though, this bank’s struggle will benefit the vendor. Fiserv Inc. made a similar declaration during its last earnings call, too.

This sentiment points to the problem financial institutions nationwide are still experiencing, even though the economy continues to heal.

“Often people think that a recovery will make and fix everything,” said Rob Heyvaert, corporate executive vice president, on the call. “This time around, for financial institutions, it’s a very different story. It’s a story about cost takeouts, but it’s also a story about keeping up to hyper-connectivity and social media.”

That “different” story could bode well for innovation efforts. During the call, FIS also gave innovation developments some airtime and said it continues to invest in early-stage and emerging technologies.

“Our focus on innovation, new product development and enhancements including mobile, bill pay and loyalty offerings is producing tangible benefits and driving strong profitable growth for our company,” said Norcross.

Furthermore,  as nontraditional competitors enter the financial services market, FIS argued that bankers must provide technology that allows them to keep and retain their clients.

FIS generated revenue of $5.75 billion last year. The stock is trading about 1.45% higher today.