Alltel and IBM have formed a joint venture to provide Corebank, a continuous "real-time" customer information and product development system, to financial services organisations in Europe. IBM has taken a minority stake in the venture, which will initially target banks in Germany and France.
Under the agreement, Alltel will assume responsibility for the marketing, development, enhancement and maintenance of the Corebank product, while IBM will be responsible for sales and implementation services. The joint venture will be based in London and will be known as Alltel Corebanking Solutions.
Corebank provides financial services organisations with customer information in a "real-time" environment, while allowing banking products to be changed and marketed quickly, say the companies. The product provides banks with detailed overviews of customers both as individuals and as groups, and works across multiple channels.
Jerry Cole, general manager, IBM global financial services sector, comments: "The joint venture will improve IBM's ability to assist European bankers with re-engineering their retail banking systems."
The alliance expands the existing relationship between the companies and provides Alltel with premier partner status in IBM's PartnerWorld programme. Under the agreement, Alltel is the preferred provider for core banking solutions running on IBM eServer z Series with OS/390 software and the IBM DB2 Universal Database.
Jeff Fox, president of Alltel Information Services, says: "By combining our extensive marketing and development background with IBM's sales and systems integration capability, we believe we step to the front of the financial services IT marketplace."
The venture is Alltel's second major investment in the European marketplace in the past year, following the establishment of a third party mortgage administration service in March of 2000. The company, Alltel Mortgage Solutions, currently services 400,000 residential loans and mortgage assets of $25 billion.