Optiva Bank in Estonia has licensed VisiBroker 4 from Imprise/Borland to integrate all of its existing customer databases. The Corba-based product is also being used to provide integration support for the bank's Web and phone banking services.
Optiva has developed a multi-tier application to rationalise information from branch offices and existing SQL databases to provide a centralised view of all customer information.
Olavi Akerman, IT director, Optiva Bank, says: "We were faced with a multitude of systems running on different platforms ranging from AS/400 systems through to Windows machines."
The bank loked at other object request brokers, he says, but an existing strong base of development skills in Borland's Delphi tool made the transition to Corba much smoother.
There are 250 internal and 8000 external users of Optiva's customer relationship management (CRM) system, which provides quick and easy access to customer account details. In the branch, staff can query the system for information such as account restrictions, stocks and shares portfolios as well as basic information. Customer account details are updated centrally as soon as changes are requested.
Many internal banking processes have been automated under the new system, which provides personalised pre-filled forms for bank loans, overdrafts and mortgages. The system also runs a centralised database of customer's scanned signatures in an effort to clamp down on fraud and forgery.
Optiva has since reused the core Corba technology to roll out an automated phone banking system.