IBS Journal March 2015
Fidor Bank
Munich-based Fidor Bank, launched in 2009, has been one of the most vocal proponents of the new school of banking, largely based on open technolo- gies, online communities and social media integration. The bank has become renowned, for instance, for its current account which gives savers additional points on their interest rate if the number of likes on its Facebook page increases. Interestingly, whereas other direct banks by and large have ended up going for traditional packaged systems for their IT set-up, Fidor has built its bank from scratch, with a proprietary core banking system written in Ruby on Rails underpinning its home operations. It has subsequently spun off the technology part of its offering as Fidor Tecs, pitching a number of its software offerings on a white label basis to other banks looking to start up with an online proposition. Fidor also has bold plans for expansion. It already has an outpost in Russia, backed by local venture capital firm,
Life.Sreda, with further launches in
the UK (touted for this year) and the US in the pipeline. In Russia, Fidor’s offering is underpinned by its partner here, Probusinessbank (which holds the banking licence and is also backed by the Life group), with the latter’s core banking system, RS-Bank, from local vendor R-Style Softlab, supporting the back office processing.
Rabobank IDB
Rabobank International Direct Bank (IDB) was an ambitious project launched by the Dutch lender at the turn of the millennium to provide access to banking services for its customers around the clock. Rabobank IDB offers simple products, such as sav- ings and deposits, funds, managed funds and loans via the internet to customers in Poland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Belgium. The bank has relied on the Thaler core banking system from what was Callataÿ & Wouters (and now part of Sopra Banking Software) to support the offering, and over the last few years has undergone a major upgrade of the system. The final location to cutover to version v3 of Thaler (now Sopra Banking Platform) is Poland, with this expected to happen this year.
However, Mein Post, the long-standing COO at Rabobank IDB, recently left the Rabobank HQ in Utrecht ©Michielverbeek, Commons Wikimedia
bank after over 15 years there in a number of roles. Post was responsible for oversee- ing the implementation and maintenance of the core software over the years, as well as the recent upgrade initiative.
Telenor banka
Another pioneer of the online only model in its local market is Telenor banka in Serbia. The bank is an offshoot of the major telecommunications player of the same name, deriving from the former business owned by KBC Bank, acquired by Telenor in 2013. The bank offers customers a current account with online and mobile user interfaces, with in-built self-service functionality, built using widgets, which allows for customers to set limits, turn on/off card pay- ment channels, change their PIN, authorise another person to their account or register for new bank service via these channels. The technology is supported in the back office by regional software player, Asseco, which supplies its Microsoft-based PUB 2000 core banking system.
The mobile and internet banking applications, however, are proprietary developments built by the bank using HTML5 and Java, with mobile support for the Android operating system available from launch, and compatibility with Apple’s iOS in the pipeline. The offering is somewhat undermined, however, by local regulations which stipulate that new customers can only open accounts in person.
© IBS Intelligence 2015
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