Signature Fiserv
One of the main systems in Fiserv’s suite is Signature, an IBM midrange-based offering that for much of its life went under the names of ICBS and CBS. It is the supplier’s higher-end core system offering and has a broad user base, built up since the mid-1980s.
Signature – origins
The system has roots back to Citibank, with Fiserv acquiring the rights in the mid-1980s. It ran on the IBM midrange (the S/3X, then the AS/400, now the iSeries) and was developed for retail banking. For a time, it had been sold by BIS Banking Systems alongside its corporate banking system, Midas, but this came to an end in 1993 after the arrival of Fiserv. It is the one Fiserv core banking system that has gained
non-US takers in any numbers over the years, and continues to do so in a few markets, including the UK. Poland was another traditional stronghold.
The system started as the International Comprehensive
Banking System (ICBS), and was originally developed with Citibank and then came to be owned by the bank. BIS Banking Systems sold it for a few years but in 1991 Citicorp Information Resources and the rights to the system were acquired by Fiserv Inc. The business was renamed Fiserv CBS, a division of the much larger Fiserv Inc. The core business of the rest of the group was bureau services, which remains the case today. While Signature is not the newest system on the market, Fiserv has continually evolved it over the years. There was a separate US version, CBS (now also rebranded as Signature). Among the enhancements to CBS/Signature since Fiserv took overall control of the system are a branch teller system, a self-service delivery layer for linking to a range of devices, a call center management system for account handling, and computer telephony integration and workflow management systems. In addition, it has sold CSI’s Banktrade as the trade finance element. A CRM layer was developed with an existing user, UK-based Birmingham Midshires Building Society, and resides in front of the system and tracks all customer interactions. Data Warehouse for Signature (InformEnt, then CBS Data Warehouse, as was) was launched in 1998, with a fair number of banks having signed for this. 2002 saw the launch of two new applications: a mortgage origination offering and a ‘customer attraction’ application. CBS was originally written in the AS/400-specific RPG language. Fiserv made several attempts to move off this platform. For a while, the intended way forward involved a Java rewrite, with this planned to kick off in early 2002. A Java version was produced but it was too sluggish and did not make it as a commercial offering. Meanwhile, the system seems to have ably served its users, with few signs of unhappy customers or failed implementations. The supplier has
continued to build around the core. In mid-2001, it added an internet banking platform, Alliant FinancialNet, to reside with CBS and intended for consumer and small business banking. In recent years, Fiserv has offered its Corillian Online and Voyager solutions. CBS was also taken for an internet project in the US at
existing ICBS user, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, as it prepared to move into the US with a new entity called Marketshare. The largest user by some distance was Poland- based Millennium BCP, which steadily rolled out the system at home, with implementations as well in the US and Canada in the first quarter of 2002 (these took the CBS version of the system), and in France.
The Java version of CBS was still awaited and was overtaken by events in the form of the company’s plans for a major restructuring of its product. Sales of CBS now comprised four layers made up of the shrinking CBS core engine, a connectivity layer called Communicator, a Business Process Engine layer, and CBS Business Apps. This evolution of CBS took place during 2006 and 2007. Fiserv also extended the Customer Information File of CBS to turn it into an ‘enterprise customer hub’ which could incorporate third party data and could be marketed as a solution in its own right. The core was, in effect, meant to be stripped of much of its content and allowed to shrink to a kernel, which would eventually be rewritten. The company felt that this was a more appropriate evolution than simply moving the existing system over to Java. Playing a key role in the product evolution plans has been Fiserv’s Aperio solution. This is its multi-channel sales and service platform built on top of the Portrait Foundation application platform suite from Portrait Software (AIT Group, as was, and now part of Pitney Bowes). A couple of early takers of Aperio were international ICBS customers, Papua New Guinea- based Bank of South Pacific and Mexico-based Banco Facil. In early 2007, Fiserv closed in on completing a version of CBS for Linux. The development involved converting the RPG code into C using a third party tool. It marked the first time that the system had been available on any platform other than the IBM midrange.
Fiserv continued to acquire companies, some of which
were pertinent to CBS, such as when it ramped up its anti- money laundering (AML) and compliance offering when it acquired Netherlands-based NetEconomy. Fiserv’s commitment to CBS looked as strong as ever,
given the reengineering and parallel Linux/C strategy. At a corporate level, there has been a significant push onto the
US Financial Services Technology Market Report |
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