Posted By Gbaf News
Posted on December 6, 2014
The US’ fifth largest bank implements BIAN’s standardised Business – IT framework
The standardised banking services Business Capability – IT model, designed by not-for-profit Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN), is launched at PNC Bank.
PNC Financial Services Group, of which PNC Bank is part, is one of the largest diversified financial services organisations in the US, with assets of $327 billion. PNC Bank began its journey with BIAN framework following a period of rapid M&A growth, which evolved into the following challenges:
- Growing cost of maintaining complex core banking systems
- Increasing time to market with innovation
- Accelerating the modernisation of its application portfolio
To overcome these challenges, PNC Bank underwent a proof of value (POV) business and technology transformation – incorporating the BIAN banking Business – IT framework and using IBM Banking Process and Service Models (IFW). The BIAN model relies on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that facilitates the realisation of any banking business scenario as a collaboration among a pre-defined set of core business capabilities and IT building blocks.
The method
In the case of PNC Bank, the BIAN model was piloted using two different approaches. A ‘bottom up’ approach was taken with PNC Bank’s account opening business scenario, while a ‘top down’ approach was tested on the bank’s corporate lending services.
The ‘bottom up’ approach focused on the current legacy applications and used SOA to identify how these can be componentised. In contrast, the top down approach started with the SOA-based solution design to the business problem and developed specific components to meet this design.
Key findings
- An alignment of IBM Banking Models (IFW) with BIAN Service Landscape (SL).
- The utilisation of IBM Banking Models & Tools in developing IT solutions conforming to BIAN standards for both top-down & bottom-up approaches.
- An end-to-end methodology for solution/ service design and implementation leveraging BIAN Service Landscape.
- Significant advancement of the PNC BIAN Business Architecture Capability Model
Contributions to the cause of BIAN by generating and sharing insight on the practical use of the Service Landscape.
The exercise also uncovered opportunities for implementing this on an industry scale – as well as the opportunities this would present to Enterprise Architecture practitioners and IT solution providers like IBM and financial service providers like PNC:
A standardised Business – IT architecture can support banks to develop a digital strategy – essential for competing in the modern banking environment. Many banks rely on aging, convoluted IT systems; organising the banks’ key business scenarios into Business capability – IT building blocks can enable banks to update systems as and when required.
Hans Tesselaar, Executive Director BIAN commented: “Putting the BIAN model into practice at PNC Bank provided us with a fantastic opportunity to test the standardised Business – IT framework in action using IBM Banking Process and Service Models (IFW).
“BIAN and IBM were able to provide support to PNC Bank in overcoming the modern IT challenges, such as scalability and innovation, which are familiar to many global financial organisations.
“The pilot also identified a wealth of opportunities for the whole finance industry, while pinpointing key focus areas for BIAN going forwards. Working with BIAN to categorise the key business scenarios that define a banking IT landscape and identify the links between them, IT solution providers like IBM and financial service providers like PNC are building a banking IT standard that can support the future of the whole industry.”