As part of a three year overhaul of its global retail banking operations, the Philippine National Bank (PNB) is implementing i-flex solutions' core banking technology Flexcube, which will run on a hardware infrastructure provided by HP.
HP says it will supply a complete hardware platform for the bank's transition from a combined mainframe and minicomputer environment to a standard, open-system architecture based on HP Integrity Superdome servers, which are powered by the Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processor, which will run which the Flexcube system.
The architecture also includes HP ProLiant servers and HP StorageWorks XP10000 Disk Arrays.
PNB's more than 90 overseas branches are all currently running on disparate systems, which will be standardised on the new architecture, says HP. Locally, the new system also will lay the foundation for the bank's global data centre.
John Howard Medina, first vice president and project director for the replacement of core banking systems at PNB, says: "Each country that we operate in has very specific regulatory and business requirements that are difficult to address with one standard system. However, we were lucky to find a very good fit with Flexcube software and HP hardware for all our domestic and overseas operations."
PNB says it expects the new system to cut operational costs by at least 30%.
The bank plans to activate the new system across its overseas branches by the first quarter of 2007. First to go live will be the London office, followed by branches in Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong and the United States.