While banks might be cutting rates for IT contractors - see Navjeet's blog post from last month, and the Barclays announcement yesterday - it seems quite a few vendors are still doing well.

For core banking system vendors in particular, there has been a spate of good financial results.

In its quarterly announcement today Temenos  net income was up 37% on the prior year's quarter.

Misys' full-year figures reported last week showed more modest growth, with operating profits up 10% for its treasury and capital markets division and up 2% for its banking division

Meanwhile i-Flex also reported last week, with 188% net income growth on the year-ago quarter

There was good news in payments processing too, with Global Payments net income for their full financial year up 23%

And in high-end services and outsourcing for the financial services industry, IBM has also done well recently. In comments to the analysts when results were announced on July 18, Mark Loughridge IBM's CFO said: "Our worldwide Financial Services growth accelerated to 15 percent growth, or 6 percent at constant currency."

They credit better integration across IBM business areas and a shift away from commodity business lines as a major key to recent success.

Across all these firms one common reason cited for success, despite acknowledging that come clients in the financial services sector are facing difficulty, is being globally diverse. Most banking system sales these days are in Asia, Middle East and Africa - where all the major players have been active - and IBM has unrivalled global coverage for its technology and services to help mitigate market risk.

So which vendors are feeling the crunch at the moment? A quick trawl through some recent announcement show that the banking systems and services market in the US might be getting tougher, with domestic giants Fiserv and Metavante posting falls in net income for comparable periods a year ago.

Other firms, such as Online Resources and Cybersource  - which again are very focused on the US market - have reported quarterly losses.

For those fintech vendor firms that give market conditions and declining bank budgets as a reason for declining financial performance, it is perhaps worth taking a closer look to see if that is true, or if it's a convenient excuse that could be being used to mask other problems within the company.