DnB NORD is a joint venture between Oslo-based DnB NOR, Norway's largest financial services group, and NORD/LB, Norddeutsche Landesbank und Girocentrale, a leading universal bank in North Germany. The bank selected FLEXCUBE for its banking transformation initiative across Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Finland and Denmark. The FLEXCUBE implementation commenced late February this year, and Denmark and Finland were live by early July.

The transformation project spans the corporate and consumer business of DnB NORD, across multiple legal entities. A joint team from the bank and i-flex ConsultingTM created a common business operating model across all countries, and is now helping DnB NORD standardize its business structure and processes on FLEXCUBE for better operational efficiency.

Jan Kühnel, COO Bank DnB NORD noted: "We are pleased that FLEXCUBE has gone live in a remarkably short time span — about 4 months — in Denmark and Finland. i-flex has demonstrated its ability to deliver solutions at aggressive timelines and we're confident the transformation of our banking platforms in other countries will follow just as quickly. The ability to run multi-entity operations and the product's breadth of functionality to address the needs of our existing businesses, and evolving demands shaped by future growth and shifting regulatory requirements, were ideal credentials."

On partnering with DnB NORD, Joseph John, Executive Vice-President, Banking Products Division, i-flex solutions, stated: "We are delighted to be a partner of choice at DnB NORD to enable the banking transformation program. Encouraged by the success of going live with FLEXCUBE in the Nordics (Denmark and Finland) in an aggressive timeframe, we are confident we will keep up the pace for FLEXCUBE going live across the rest of DnB NORD's countries of operation."

Separately, i-flex solutions (Reuters: IFLX.BO & IFLX.NS), a leading provider of technology solutions to the global financial services inndustry, announced the launch of the FLEXCUBE Lending Suite specifically designed to address the lending requirements of financial institutions and consumer credit organizations.

The FLEXCUBE Lending Suite focuses on the key pillars of a lending business - Origination-Servicing-Collections. It can coexist and integrate with lending institutions' existing applications to enable them to leverage existing data. It can accelerate the speed with which they can offer customized products and enhance customer service. In addition it has a rich analytics offering and the ability to integrate with the Oracle Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) framework.

"The FLEXCUBE Lending Suite uses predefined industry best practices and lending processes that will enable banks, financial institutions and consumer credit organizations to run their businesses more effectively. Its inbuilt process capability will help them launch products swiftly and provide a platform for process reengineering. It can be easily integrated with Governance, Risk and Compliance frameworks and allows institutions to be compliant with changing regulations and manage their risks effectively. With the solution in place, lending institutions can focus on their core business and become more competitive and customer focused," says Joseph John, Executive Vice President, Banking Products Division, i-flex solutions.

The FLEXCUBE Lending Suite offers better return on investment (ROI) because it is built on Oracle Fusion Middleware, with support for SOA (service-oriented architecture) and open standards. In addition, its use of J2EE makes it robust and scalable. Oracle's industry- standard BPEL and Business Activity Monitoring components provide FLEXCUBE Lending Suite with strong Business Process Management capabilities. The solution provides financial institutions a single integrated platform with solutions for Origination, Servicing, Collections addressing Consumer, Small Business and Commercial Lending, Mortgages and Islamic Offerings. In addition, J2EE support makes it robust and scalable.

The FLEXCUBE Lending Suite provides the following benefits to financial institutions and consumer credit organizations:

• A comprehensive product that covers design, execution of transactions to measurement of business efficiency.
• Ability to integrate multi-product Origination capability with existing applications for Servicing and Collections for Lending.
• Flexibility to address new business models in consumer and commercial credit.
• Ability to continuously measure and adapt business processes.
• A Customer Analytics engine that helps capitalize on a financial institution's existing technology and knowledge assets.
• Embedded support for Governance, Risk and Compliance Frameworks.