Skip to content
Back to the daily read

Daily Read: AI

OpenAI Enhances COBOL Migration for Banks

OpenAI announced that its latest language models can assist banks in migrating legacy COBOL applications to modern programming languages. The company said 40 % of banks worldwide still run on COBOL, and the aging workforce that maintains those systems is shrinking. By improving its models’ ability to understand and rewrite COBOL code, OpenAI hopes to reduce the cost and time required for banks to modernise. The firm introduced an evaluation suite called MultiLangBench that tests models on 20 languages, including COBOL, and reported that GPT‑6 Astra achieved an 87.4 % pass rate overall, with a 72 % rate for COBOL. OpenAI also benchmarked migration tasks, where GPT‑6.1 Sol preserved banking‑specific behaviours such as rounding and missing‑record handling with 97.9 % accuracy at high reasoning effort. The company noted that a successful migration requires all tests to pass and that production deployment still demands expert review. These advances could accelerate the retirement of COBOL systems and reduce the financial risk for banks.

· Engadget

The essential points

  1. 01OpenAI’s GPT‑6 Astra passes 87.4 % of 20‑language tests, 72 % on COBOL.
  2. 02GPT‑6.1 Sol preserves banking behaviours with 97.9 % accuracy during COBOL‑to‑modern‑language migrations.
  3. 0340 % of global banks still depend on COBOL, but the developer pool is shrinking.
  4. 04A migration must pass all tests; production use still requires expert oversight.
The full brief

OpenAI announced that its latest language models can assist banks in migrating legacy COBOL applications to modern programming languages. The company said 40 % of banks worldwide still run on COBOL, and the aging workforce that maintains those systems is shrinking. By improving its models’ ability to understand and rewrite COBOL code, OpenAI hopes to reduce the cost and time required for banks to modernise. The firm introduced an evaluation suite called MultiLangBench that tests models on 20 languages, including COBOL, and reported that GPT‑6 Astra achieved an 87.

4 % pass rate overall, with a 72 % rate for COBOL. OpenAI also benchmarked migration tasks, where GPT‑6. 1 Sol preserved banking‑specific behaviours such as rounding and missing‑record handling with 97. 9 % accuracy at high reasoning effort.

The company noted that a successful migration requires all tests to pass and that production deployment still demands expert review. These advances could accelerate the retirement of COBOL systems and reduce the financial risk for banks.