In Canada, the six largest banks have >90% of the market. I forgot to mention, only three of about ten remaining COBOL developers took jobs with PNC. The rest retired. Two of the ones who stayed are maybe in their 30s. (Not sure, but that is my guess.) The other is early 50s. I think he said his job had a "mainframe component", but much would be off mainframe. In fact, I think he said they have an AS/400 (now "IBM Power running IBM i"; what a name!) as well that he'd be working on.
Of those who retired, one is 51 (!), then me at 57, and the rest over 60, with at least one being 70+. Frank ________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of Dick Williams <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2026 9:11 AM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Another one is biting the dust. PNC is 50 minutes from me and runs a mainframe. PNC being a medium sized conservatively run bank will likely get bought by someone eventually. I worked at Mellon bank, also in Pittsburgh, but Mellon got out of the retail banking business a few decades ago. Eventually, there will be 3-4 banks. Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Tuesday, August 4, 2026, 4:12 AM, Frank Swarbrick <[email protected]> wrote: Technically not quite yet, but soon. FirstBank, of Lakewood, CO USA, opened their doors in 1963 (then only one location called Westland First National Bank) and has been a mainframe customer since at least 1978. It looks like we were probably on DOS/VS at the time, proceeding up to z/VSE, then in 2010 migrating (finally!) to z/OS. We stayed with totally in-house support until 2018, when we changed to have the mainframe itself and its systems support to IBM Global Services (which is now Kyndryl). Earlier this year, FirstBank was purchased by PNC Bank, of Pittsburgh, PA USA. As of June 22, all FirstBank data was migrated to PNC's systems and FirstBank truly no longer exists. The mainframe is technically still running, but is due to be shut down within the next little while. I personally took the opportunity to both get severance and to retire as of July 31, so I won't be there to turn off the lights. I myself had been with FirstBank since 1991 and a COBOL developer and analyst since 1996. As this is mostly a list for sysprogs I don't post too much here. I'll remain subscribed just because it can be interesting at times. Frank Swarbrick ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
