New IBM Software Platform To Help Banks Improve Infrastructure

IBM has unveiled a unified software platform to help banks be more efficient, improve their flexibility and adapt more easily to new business challenges and regulatory requirements. Part of the IBM Smarter Planet strategy, the new platform enables banks to simplify the modernisation, management and monitoring of their technology systems, while lowering risk by avoiding the disruptive business consequences that have characterised these activities in the past.

"There is a key need in the banking industry for a common platform that can span multiple areas within an organisation and help harmonise the siloed systems that have resulted through years of mergers, acquisitions and piecemeal infrastructure enhancements," said June Yee Felix, general manager, IBM Banking and Financial Markets. "The IBM Banking Framework provides a flexible unified software platform that can help banks anticipate and respond to client needs while reducing the costs of developing, operating and maintaining the systems that span the front, middle and back-office operations."

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The new platform breaks through the ‘silos’ that often exist between a bank’s departments, allowing true data transparency and application sharing. For example, when using the new framework, staff within one part of the bank will be able to track transactions across multiple business lines in order to identify fraudulent activity before it happens, while other staff elsewhere in the bank can use those same analytic tools to understand customer behaviour and preferences.

The IBM Banking Industry Framework addresses four key areas that demand the majority of a bank’s attention and resources, providing a path to accelerate transformation, and system upgrade with an eye towards future needs and reduced project risk. The features of the framework include:

* Integrated risk management to support a holistic approach to managing financial risk, operational and IT risk, financial crimes detection and prevention, and compliance.

* Customer care and insight to help banks build a foundation for creating a single view of the customer and enabling more effective and efficient sales and service.

* Payments and securities to help banks progressively transform their payments operations to become more flexible and efficient.

* Core banking transformation that allows banks to modernise and renovate existing systems that sustain core banking functions while aligning with the changing needs of the business.

The framework is a software technology backbone that makes a wide range of smart banking solutions possible, utilising the full spectrum of IBM’s software portfolio including WebSphere, Tivoli, Rational, Lotus, ILOG and Information Management products and industry-specific extensions such as WebSphere Business Integration for Financial Networks and COGNOS Credit Risk Performance.

The IBM Banking Industry Framework provides integration between IBM framework middleware and partner applications from key Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). These ISVs have joined with IBM to help banking clients solve challenging business problems. The combined IBM and ISV solutions offered by the IBM Banking Industry Framework enable banking customers to speed time to market, reduce development risk, lower development costs, and improve return on investment.