Global banking standards association the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) has completed the development of a standardised IT architecture design for banks, which aims to help them tackle problems associated with legacy IT and drastically cut the cost of technology integration.

Designed by the likes of Microsoft, SAP, IBM, UBS, PNC and ABN Amro, BIAN’s Service Landscape 4.0 sets out to define the standard business capabilities that make up a bank and provides a framework to help banks update or replace their core IT systems.

Unlike previous frameworks, this latest architecture promotes a more integrated approach to managing banking processes and encourages banks to break down siloes across their corporate, business and consumer functions.

“By implementing this on an industry and worldwide scale, banks will be able to develop and on-board innovative technology offerings without battling through ageing or tangled enterprise architecture and at lower integration costs,” said Hans Tesselaar, executive director of BIAN.

The framework also provides some insight into how banks can manage application programming interfaces (APIs) – a set of functions that allow two different pieces of software to interact with one another. APIs have been a hot topic in the banking industry since UK chancellor George Osborne announced an initiative to encourage banks to open their APIs with the aim of encouraging technology collaboration across banks and alternative financial technology players.

BIAN members will now turn their attention to identifying how the Service Landscape can support this from a core banking perspective.

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