When it acquired HVB Group in 2005, three entities came under the fold of UniCredit Bulbank: Hebros Bank, HVB Bank Biochim and Bulbank. The vision of the UniCredit team was to merge the operations of these three banks and bring them under a common operating platform, thus creating the biggest and the strongest banking entity in the country.

After evaluating offerings from other vendors, and being aware of i-flex solutions' proven track record in helping banks standardize their banking platforms in a cost-and-time-effective fashion, UniCredit chose FLEXCUBE in 2006. i-flex solutions replaced the existing systems at its Bulgarian entities with a standard version of FLEXCUBE and the bank went live on the new, integrated, platform in less than 14 months.

S. Sundararajan, Senior Vice-President, Banking Products Division, i-flex solutions, said: "The project is proof of our ability to support our customers in key M&A activities and also help them realize the benefits in a short time frame. We see an opportunity to assist other banks looking at consolidating assets in the new EU countries."

From the outset, UniCredit wanted to re-evaluate the existing structures within each of the banks and evolve a new model that would allow them to offer a unified portfolio of products, a robust operational framework, and a common IT platform that would offer scalability and flexibility. The project team, therefore, set the ambitious objective of creating a uniform target version for all three entities, with FLEXCUBE being deployed as part of a 'big-bang' implementation. The integration plan was to upgrade Hebros Bank, which was already using FLEXCUBE, to the target version, and migrating HVB Bank Biochim and Bulbank as well.

The integration required constant evaluation and fine-tuning. Nicola Cattane, IT Cluster Manager, UniCredit, said: "In order to offer the best set of products across the bank, we developed standard models for each banking entity and delivered on these at very aggressive timelines. The attendant changes required in FLEXCUBE were very quickly delivered by the i-flex solutions team."