Key Takeaways:
If you’re a bank thinking of outsourcing IT, the most important parts of your managed service provider (MSP) agreement may be what’s between the lines. The key is to focus on the details. Ask these questions to know whether an MSP is up to the challenge of working in the highly regulated banking environment. Determine:
- Whether there’s an end-user help desk available, what the hours are, and what escalation services look like if there are serious issues
- Whether service packages and software are banking-compliant
- How many banks the MSP has worked for, and what those case studies and references look like
- What its compliance operation is like, and whether experts are on hand to help with your annual regulatory reviews
When MSPs have banking experience, they can help your financial institution secure its data, boost productivity, and stay one step ahead of the latest banking regulations.
If you’re a community bank leader looking to improve your operational maturity, chances are you’ve considered outsourcing your IT to a managed IT service provider (MSP).
Companies of all types have realized the money and time-saving benefits of working with an IT MSP—and business is booming. Even with the current economic headwinds, Statista estimates the value of the IT MSP industry in the US at $10.60 billion, with steady 2%—3% growth to reach $11.48 billion in 2029.
Our own surveys confirm that IT spending is alive and well in the banking sector, too. In our recent report, Understanding US Bank’s Annual Spend in 2025, 70% of nearly 1,000 banking executives we interviewed said they plan to increase IT spending in 2025—much of that through an MSP. But, as with any business partnership, the devil is in the details. The benefits of the relationship with your MSP will be only as good as the contract you sign. What should you ask before you sign on the dotted line? Let’s break it down.
Five Questions to Ask During MSP Agreement Negotiations
Most MSP agreements include the basics such as software license costs and monthly service fees. But the information you’ll need most is what’s not written down. You need to understand the breadth and depth of the services on offer. Here’s how to ask the questions that can get you the information you need.
Question1: Do you have a help desk, and what are the hours? Are there escalation services for serious matters, and is there an extra charge for this?
The coverage and quality of help desk service can vary enormously between MSPs. A small, local MSP may only offer break-fix service and no end-user help desk services at all. Still others may only have local staff available to answer questions during strictly defined hours.
That can cost you. A bank of any size is a high-risk operation that can’t tolerate downtime. At a minimum, you’ll need an MSP that can provide help desk services for users during bank operating office hours.
More important, you’ll need 24/7 help desk services for IT staff to report breaches, outages, or system breakdowns. When the worst happens, you’ll need an MSP that can have engineers on the ground if required and escalation services that can connect you to your software vendors or higher-level engineers trained to deal with complex problems.
Escalations: A Critical Part of Help Desk Services
Even if your MSP says it offers these services, you’ll need clarity about whether escalation services are included in your monthly fees or billed separately. You should also get more information on the training and certifications of the people working with you. How well do they understand a bank’s unique software and operational needs? Their answers will be telling and will quickly reveal what your service experience will be like with them.
The best MSPs will offer a dedicated service team that is assigned to your bank and knows your systems intimately. They’ll provide a virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO) who directs work on your behalf, writes your annual IT plan, and manages your annual IT budget. This level of service is usually worth the price, even if you already have a robust internal IT staff. It helps you avoid problems and save money down the road.
Question 2: Are your service packages specifically designed for banks?
Many MSPs say that they understand the banking sector. But do they? Do they know how your core banking software interacts with other common cybersecurity and productivity tools? Can they keep your customer’s precious financial data safe?
Can the MSP configure a disaster recovery program and appropriate backups for the financial sector? Critically, are the service packages and software it proposes compliant with current banking regulations and best practices?
The IT partner you choose should not only understand the industry jargon, but also have crafted service plans explicitly designed around the needs and pain points of bank operations.
Question 3: How many community banks do you work with today? Can you provide case studies or references?
Sometimes, some old-school sleuthing can help you drill down to the answers you need. Talking to an MSP’s current clients can illuminate many hidden issues. Ask for examples about how the MSP stepped up to help deal with operational challenges. Here are some recommendations for what you should ask:
- Do you have internal IT staff? If so, how do you divide labor between your organization and your MSP? Are the people assigned to your business easy to work with? Do they have your back when you need it most?
- Is its monthly billing statement prompt and understandable? Do unexpected charges frequently show up on your monthly bill?
- Does your MSP provide you with reporting so your C-suite executives can see the value of your IT investment?
- How much high-level planning is included in your MSP agreement? Can anyone on staff create an IT strategy and budget for the year? Are they proactive about identifying problems and good about devising scalable solutions to address them?
- How good is the MSP’s grasp of cybersecurity and best practices in the banking industry?
Question 4: What is your compliance operation like? Do you have anyone on staff who can help us with our annual cyber security reviews?
Banking cybersecurity is a unique beast. At a minimum, the experts at your MSP should understand the cybersecurity tools needed to secure the financial data that is your stock and trade. They need to have a good grasp of banking regulations so they can set you up with a responsible IT architecture.
Just as important, an MSP must understand what the monitoring and reporting requirements are for your bank. Their staff should know how to generate reports on all your cybersecurity remediations, show proof of your continuous monitoring, and develop written cybersecurity plans, policies, and procedures. When it’s time for your review with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), they should help you answer the questions in your IT exam, too.
A strong compliance operation has several downstream benefits. For instance, an MSP can help you assemble the documentation you need to get a sound cyber-risk insurance policy. It can help with other tasks too, such as vetting new software tools and vendors against banking industry data handling standards. In banking, sophisticated, future-forward compliance isn’t optional. It shouldn’t be optional for your MSP, either.
Question 5: How does your MSP handle monitoring and remediation of its client’s systems? What reports do they generate? How can clients view those reports?
This question truly separates a good MSP from a bad one. Why? Because it points to issues of coordination, communication, and transparency.
Most banks will need an MSP with a broad combination of cybersecurity and productivity tools. Many of these tools reside on their vendor cloud platforms and generate their own free-standing monitoring reports. All those vendor platforms can create a thicket of conflicting reports, which your MSP may or may not sort for you. Some product plans will include automatic remediations for emerging system problems. Others will send only an alert and expect the client to remediate itself.
As you can see, your remediation protocol will enormously impact your IT budget and daily tasks. It’s critically important to understand who will receive those alerts and who is responsible for all the tools in the system. Otherwise, your team could be buried in a mountain of false positives and quarantine reports.If it costs a bit more to get white-glove remediation service, it’s better to know that up front.
The best MSPs will have a comprehensive client dashboard that allows you to see the health and reports on all your tools in a unified, single pane of glass. You should be able to look in at any time to assess the health of your systems. Dashboards like these will allow you to download and print out reports you need for regulators, your C-suite, and cyber-risk insurers.
Are you looking for an IT partner for your bank? Integris can help.
Our Integris Financial Institution Division is dedicated to the needs of community banks and credit unions, serving more than 120 financial institutions nationwide. We offer a wide array of specialized product packages for financial institutions that are fit for purpose and real-world tested. We’d love to show you the Integris difference. Contact us today for a free consultation.
