BIAN's goal is to enable banks to rapidly adapt their IT systems to accommodate strategic and operational business changes and to enhance interoperability between banks. To achieve this, BIAN seeks to accelerate the adoption of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in the banking industry, fostering easier and more cost-effective integration of SOA for financial institutions.

By leveraging existing technology standards and specifications, BIAN will create a comprehensive framework of business-focused semantic services for banking. The framework will provide a model that institutions can use to rapidly integrate best-of-breed SOA components into highly functional and flexible applications, providing a cost-effective way to migrate from today's legacy systems to the more agile, SOA-based next-generation banking platforms.

"As a member, FERNBACH will be pleased to provide its expertise to BIAN for building enterprise-wide SOA banking applications," said Günther Fernbach, CEO of FERNBACH-Software. "The service-oriented architecture of the FlexFinance® Loan components is distinctly different from other systems even today since it was developed consistently using a service-oriented approach from the beginning."

Johan Kestens, Chair of the Board of BIAN, welcomes the new member, "As an open community we live with and from the experience, knowledge and contribution of our members. In this context the Board of BIAN welcomes FERNBACH-Software very much as this new member will strengthen BIAN's position and reach in the financial industries."

BIAN, which was founded in the spring of 2008 as a successor of SAP's Industry Value Network for Banks (IVN) originally created in 2005, now operates as an independent non-profit organisation. BIAN will soon be publishing first works including SOA Building Blocks, Architecture Foundation and Methodologies, a banking-specific Service Landscape and services from different areas such as Sales and Services, Operations and Execution and Analytics.