The Corebank solution will enable İŞBANK to provide better customer service by streamlining and simplifying all of the processes that are part of the account life-cycle. İŞBANK also has chosen to migrate to a Java-compliant environment and will implement Corebank J2EE (Java2 Platform Enterprise Edition).

Corebank J2EE will replace the bank's existing home-grown legacy applications.

İŞBANK is the largest bank in Turkey and is ranked 53rd in Europe, based on the bank's consolidated Tier-1 capital strength and assets of $69 billion, according to The Banker. İŞBANK offers its customers a comprehensive range of retail products and services, including savings and term deposit accounts, current accounts, overdrafts, and term loan and commercial lending.

"We currently are running a project - the Customer-centric Transformation Program - in which we are substantially investing in a new IT infrastructure," said Hakan Aran, manager, İŞBANK. "With more than 15.5 million customer accounts to support, Corebank is central to this huge transformation programme. Throughout the selection process, we have been impressed constantly by the depth of industry knowledge and superior level of commitment shown by FIS. We opted for Corebank J2EE, as it best suited our requirements. It provides customer-centric flexibility, integrates to a Java-adapted environment and has proven capability to match the scale of our operations. We are very excited about the possibilities Corebank will afford our business."

İŞBANK's decision to find a new core-system environment resulted from the need to improve operations, reduce costs, improve customer service and generate new revenues. İŞBANK also wanted to move from its current hierarchical database onto a relational database.

With Corebanank, İŞBANK now has a c comprehensive core banking solution with proven integration, open architecture and robust functionality. A true real-time, continuous-processing solution, Corebank provides a multichannel, multibranch, multicurrency, multilingual retail banking environment.

One of the bank's main objectives is to be able to launch new products quickly and easily, in response to market demands and changing customer needs. Product Build, one component of Corebank, is designed to support faster introduction of innovative product structures and packages. İŞBANK currently has a strong share of Turkey's lending market and is eager to build on this to become a leading player in the fast-emerging mortgage market.

"Corebank's rich design capability and well-structured architecture will enable us to build innovative products quickly in the rapidly growing mortgage segment in Turkey - a priority area for our business," said Mr Aran. "Rather than relying on proprietary technology as most banking systems do, Corebank J2EE is a standards-based application, which means it can flex to react to industry technology trends and improve processing for our customers' and our prospects' benefit."

"This project is another important milestone in the development of Corebank," said Mark Davey, managing director for FIS' EMEA region. "Corebank already is used by more than 150 major banks, and this project with İŞBANK, one of the biggest banks in one of the world's fastest growing markets, shows that our technology now has the scale and breadth of functionality to support the ambitions of even very large financial institutions. We are excited and proud to be able to use the most modern technology to power the systems that run at the heart of the world's most respected banks."