While everyone’s chasing AI and Data Science… COBOL is quietly running the world.

Question

You’ve heard the stat: COBOL powers 95% of ATM transactions — but that’s just scratching the surface.

The real story? COBOL is everywhere:

→ 85% of insurance claims are processed using COBOL
→ Major airline reservation systems still run on it
→ U.S. military missile defense? COBOL.
→ Social Security handles 250M+ records daily — with COBOL

And yet, it’s not talked about — because it just works.

Here’s the surprising truth:

COBOL isn’t outdated. It’s battle-tested, high-performance, and ultra-reliable:

• 220+ billion lines of active code
• $3 trillion processed daily
• Systems with 30+ years of uptime
• Powers 95% of global ATM swipes

Failed modernizations prove the point:

– One bank lost over $100M trying to replace COBOL
– Another gave up after 7 years of migration hell
– An insurer lost decades of customer data

So, why does COBOL persist?

99.999% uptime – almost never fails

2M+ transactions/sec – unmatched speed

50+ years of security hardening

Mathematical precision – critical for finance

While the tech world obsesses over the next big thing, COBOL remains the unshakable foundation of global finance.

Sometimes the most important technology...
is the one that’s already doing the job better than anything else.

Comments

Nice, Abhishek—COBOL’s resilience and scale are impressive. Do you think the industry will ever fully move away from legacy systems, or is maintaining COBOL expertise still essential for the foreseeable future?

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It is going to take a long time before we migrate from something like COBOL. But its vital at this point cos, the COBOL programmers who wrote these code a either retired or even dead. At the same time we have no more new COBOL developers to maintain these things. Everyone is behind this AI, LLM bandwagon.

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With many original COBOL developers retired or retiring, how can institutions attract new talent to maintain and evolve these systems? ⎯ Notably, initiatives like training programs and academic engagement are emerging, but is it enough?