Bank in a Box Allows Customers to Start a Fully Functional Central Banking System Within Just 6 Months

IBM Case Study How to quickly start an innovative bank

IBM Bank in a Box allows customers to start a fully functional central banking system within just 6 months. This comprehensive solution, tailored to your unique needs, contains all essential components: infrastructure, software and services. An interesting concept is enough in order to be successful on the current digital financial market. You can leave the rest to IBM.

What is the biggest challenge for an organization that is already outdated and does not reflect current market planning to start a new bank? Based on many analyses situation. The idea that was good several months ago and surveys, as well as interviews with managers from now seems just obsolete. different financial enterprises, including IT managers, we can identify two key issues: time needed to deploy a The entry cost is the other limitation. You have to take banking system and financing of such projects. a risk and make significant financial investments in IT infrastructure, building a team that will support this infrastructure, and buying software licenses required for the projected transaction volumes. That means that during first months — and more likely, years — the “The biggest challenge was the deployment timeframe. The project system will be too large for the organization. Maybe in must be executed in phases, and some steps cannot be performed some years the projected volume will be reached, but the investments have to be made upfront. in parallel, they have to be completed one after another. Based on experience gained both by IBM and our partner, we could IBM has decided to change this situation. Together identify the most time-consuming stages. Our evaluation has with its partner Asseco, a software vendor, developer also shown that some system components may be developed on of a central banking system used by large banks — the company has created a revolutionary solution called earlier stages. Therefore when we begin a new project, we have Bank in a Box. It can be deployed just in 6 months, with already made some important steps. Considering the central minimum capital expenditures, which further reduces system architecture, the banks that operate on similar markets project risks. The customer gets a comprehensive solution with IT infrastructure located locally, and with employ quite comparable solutions. They use similar sets of all software and services required to offer proprietary products. The differences lie in their parameterizations. The Bank financial products and services. Last but not least, the in a Box solution is built on several basic banking models that are solution conforms to all strict rules and regulations imposed upon banks by the national regulatory bodies appropriately customized and tuned in the course of the project” — it is fully compliant with national and European Union laws, including the GDPR directive. — Artur Wróblewski, Global Technology Services Leader, IBM Poland.

Thanks to compliance with EU regulations and its unique flexibility, the Bank in a Box solution is being deployed in several European banking systems – both in Eastern The traditional approach starts with a planning phase, and Western Europe. If allowed by local jurisdiction, it then we have a tender procedure when functional can be deployed on IBM Cloud infrastructure. parameters are specified, and then we proceed to negotiations. After that, the selected vendor sets about implementation activities. This happens usually 18-24 months after the development of the original concept — if everything goes fine. This is definitely too long, considering rapid changes on the market. It is very likely that you will have to revise your initial assumptions after 3 months. Implementing those requirements after two years can result in having a solution that is

“The new approach enables organizations to reduce the time between making their initial investments in the banking system to acquiring first customers from two years to just three months. Such short timeframe perfectly suits the needs of emerging agile organizations from the FinTech sector. Using the Bank in a Box solution, they can quickly deploy the system and modify it as needed, so that it can satisfy most of the requirements when delivered. It provides also a clear development path. This is a perfect solution even for large banks that are ready to experiment. At little cost, with little risk and in short time they can test their concepts in market environment”

— Artur Wróblewski, Global Technology Services Leader, IBM Poland. Bank in a Box: an agile financial solution

The banking models have been built earlier, so upon signing of the contract the project is already in an advanced phase. Moreover, information about specific customer requirements and needs is obtained during negotiations. Such approach helps the suppliers to customize the system before its deployment.

2 5 MONTH MONTH

1 3 4 6 MONTH MONTH MONTH MONTH Stage 1: Stage 2: 3 months 3 months 80% of required features enabled remaining 20% of features enabled

SYSTEM FULLY OPERATIONAL: 6 months after the signing of the contract After the first stage of deployment has been completed, the original scope of work may be altered. The customer can decide that organization's requirements have changed and define them once again. The second stage of the project is then executed according to the new specifications. And that is what agility means!

How the solution was created “There is a setup charge related to project In order to provide a complete offering — apart from “The whole IT infrastructure for the Bank in a Box the development of a central system, based on the solution is located in the country. Customer's data initiation, and overall service costs depend banking models and ready for express deployment — do not leave state territory. Moreover, all employees on the number of supported accounts initial investment in IT infrastructure were required. A responsible for service delivery are also local. A or banking products. The greater this high-performance, reliable and secure Infrastructure dedicated team working in the Security Operations environment has been built in an IBM data center. Its Center keeps watch over system's security” number, the smaller charge is billed for flexible, scalable infrastructure meets the requirements — Artur Wróblewski, IBM Poland. an individual account or product. The of present day agile organizations. The complete charges cover all service components: solution can support a large number of accounts, from The Bank in a Box solution has been developed using infrastructure, application, maintenance 5,000 to 80 million, as confirmed by recent lab tests. standard components and services offered by IBM, i.e. IBM Managed Services, IBM Application Hosting and support, and security. Our customers It was also necessary to build and appropriately Services, IBM Managed Security Services, and the get the complete bank, with multi- train the team consisting of IBM representatives and IBM Cloud. channel access to financial products. employees of the Partner company that developed the banking software. The team will be responsible Optionally, apart from standard banking services, This integrated solution offers the same for solution deployment and support. Information IBM can offer access to the investment markets as a part experience and functionality in every systems are local and the team consists of local experts of the solution. Advanced technologies, e.g. artificial channel used by end consumers” — solution's compliance with laws regulating financial intelligence, cognitive computing and blockchain, can institution activities can be therefore guaranteed. be also used to support bank operations or products — Artur Wróblewski, Global Technology Services Leader, IBM Poland. and services offered to consumers.

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