Growing BIAN community continues to drive banking standards collaboration

Banking Industry Architecture Network closes Q1 2012 with four new members: ABN AMRO, Banco Galicia, SAB and UBS; and three new industry partnerships: ISO, OMG and The Open Group

Amsterdam — 16 May 2012 — BIAN, the Banking Industry Architecture Network, is celebrating the end of its most successful quarter to-date, Q1 2012, with the announcement of four new members to its international community, as well as three partnerships with existing recognised standards bodies. ABN AMRO, the Dutch bank; the Argentinean Banco Galicia; UBS, a Swiss global financial services company; and the French publisher of integrated software packages, SAB, are the latest members to join the BIAN network, collaborating on standards for service-oriented architecture (SOA) in the banking industry.

The addition of ABN AMRO, Banco Galicia, SAB and UBS brings BIAN’s total network membership to 31 members, comprised of 14 banks and 17 system integrators and software vendors. These industry participants collaborate within the unique BIAN community, working to define and set the de facto IT standards for banking interoperability, in order to help banks significantly reduce their IT integration costs which are as much as triple the purchase costs of the original software.

In Q1 this year, BIAN has partnered with independent standards bodies, Object Management Group (OMG) and The Open Group. In addition, BIAN has now received a ‘category D liaison’ with the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), for ISO 20022 semantic models. These working partnerships mark a big step forward in BIAN’s commitment to complimentary standards collaboration.

Hans Tesselaar, executive director of BIAN, commented on BIAN’s newest partnerships: “It is BIAN’s policy not to reinvent the wheel or replicate the work of existing bodies; this is why we seek cooperation with complimentary standards bodies. For example, where BIAN focuses on semantic service definitions, OMG Service Domain Task Force focuses on standards such as financial services business ontology and vocabulary, trade transaction traceability maps and financial business events taxonomy — there is little cross-over.

“BIAN looks forward to working closely with each of the standards bodies we have partnered with at both our own BIAN Core Team meetings, and our new partners’ initiatives, exchanging ideas in order to progress standardisation and interoperability in the financial industry. The door is open to other standards bodies to form partnerships with BIAN, as we strive for a truly collaborative approach to SOA standards in banking.”

Commenting on the Dutch bank’s BIAN membership, Henk Houtzager, head of strategy, innovation & architecture, ABN AMRO, said: “Increasing agility and reducing costs are priorities for ABN AMRO and we expect to achieve significant reductions in integration costs through our BIAN membership. BIAN’s proposition not only defines the banking services landscape, but provides practical implementation guidance shaped by leading industry technology vendors.”

Eduardo Agra, chief information officer, Banco Galicia, said: “Banco Galicia was the first Argentine bank to offer mobile payments and an internet portal to its customers — we adopt revolutionary technology, to enhance our customers’ banking experiences. We recognise this pioneering trait in BIAN through its pursuit of global SOA banking standards. Using BIAN’s SOA standards will speed up the time-to-market for new products from Banco Galicia, keeping us at the top of our game with regards to customer service and retention.”

Jean-Loup Joly, head of partnerships, SAB, said: “SAB pays particular attention to the development of joint projects with its clients in the banking sector and its partners. We are used to collaboration with clients through the SAB Users Club, a dynamic autonomous organisation. The BIAN deliverables can be seen as a ‘common language’ for all these joint projects and we expect that SOA components, common services and processes will bring significant gains — in both time and costs — to our clients and to SAB.”

Looking towards H2 2012, BIAN expects to build on this momentum, welcoming more members to its community and releasing the much-anticipated updated BIAN Service Landscape.

Hans Tesselaar continued: “BIAN has welcomed ten new members from the bank and vendor communities over the past year, from North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. The strong momentum is a result of the growing resonance our message has achieved in the global banking market — and the domino effect as financial institutions see their peers and competitors benefiting from SOA standards. I look forward to welcoming even more new members to the BIAN community this year.”

Notes to editor

About BIAN
Established in 2008, The Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) is an independent, member owned, not-for-profit association to establish and promote a common architectural framework for banking interoperability issues. BIAN’s goal is to define SOA and semantic definitions for IT services in the banking industry. The community focuses on creating a standard semantic banking services landscape, while ensuring consistent service definitions, levels of detail and boundaries. This will help banks to achieve a reduction of integration costs and use the advantages of a service-oriented architecture.

Financial institutions, software vendors, and system integrators, along with technology partners, are invited to join the association and play a collaborative role with other industry leaders in defining, building and implementing next-generation banking platforms.

BIAN Members: ABN AMRO, Banco Galicia, Callataÿ & Wouters, Capital Banking Solutions, CGI, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, COREtransform, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Postbank, FERNBACH, HCL Axon, IBM, ifb group, IKOR, Infosys, ING, innobis AG, kutxa, Microsoft, Rabobank, SAB, SAP, SunGard, Standard Bank of South Africa, SWIFT, Scotiabank Group, Temenos, UBS, UniCredit Group, Zürcher Kantonalbank.

About ABN AMRO
ABN AMRO is a universal bank servicing retail, private and commercial banking clients. With a strong foundation in the Netherlands, ABN AMRO supports clients based both in the domestic and international markets.

ABN AMRO is internationally active in a number of specialist activities such as Energy, Commodities & Transportation, Clearing and collateralised Finance (factoring and lease in Western Europe). Its private banking business is the market leader in the Netherlands and serves clients in 13 countries and territories.

About Banco Galicia
Founded in 1905, Banco Galicia is one of the largest private sector banks in the Argentine financial system and a leading financial services provider in the country. As a universal bank, Banco Galicia offers, through affiliated companies and a variety of distribution channels, a full spectrum of financial services to over 4.2 million customers, both individual and corporate. Banco Galicia operates one of the most extensive and diversified distribution networks among private-sector banks in Argentina, offering more than 350 points of contact with customers through its bank branches and electronic banking facilities and other 187 customer service centres corresponding to the regional credit card companies.

The Bank’s customers also have access to telephone banking services and e-galicia.com, the first mobile payment service and the first financial Internet portal, respectively, established by a bank in Argentina. The Bank’s main shareholder is Grupo Financiero Galicia S.A., a financial services holding company

About SAB
For more than 20 years, SAB has designed and marketed banking software solutions in its role as a true software vendor providing value added services. The latest product, SAB AT, marks a major change in its range of solutions, which profits from the strength and quality of SAB experience whilst acquiring functional and technical innovations aimed at optimising the processing of transactions. Amongst the innovations, the flexibility of the SOA architecture provides wider openness and integration with the rest of the world (regulatory systems, partnerships, sites).

SAB business philosophy is focused upon assisting its clients on a world-wide basis with its international expertise and the highest quality of service.

About The Open Group
The Open Group is an international vendor- and technology-neutral consortium upon which organisations rely to lead the development of IT standards and certifications, and to provide them with access to key industry peers, suppliers and best practices. The Open Group provides guidance and an open environment in order to ensure interoperability and vendor neutrality. Further information on The Open Group can be found at www.opengroup.org.

About Object Management Group’s Finance DTF
The mission of the OMG’s Finance Domain Task Force (DTF) is to promote the use of Financial Services and Accounting software that incorporate OMG standards; to provide an internationally recognized forum for industry focus on Financial Services and Accounting Facilities; to identify relevant standards, business architectures, research and technologies in this area of computing; and to assist and advise the OMG regarding its relationship with related Standards Organizations and Consortia. More on the mission statement can be found here. The most recent version of the Finance DTF roadmap will give you more information about our planned activities.

OMG is leading an ongoing public-private sector partnership with other standards organizations and regulatory agencies working to develop technology neutral standards-a critical success factor for organizations facing the challenges of being compliant with new financial regulations.