BIAN's goal is to enable banks to rapidly adapt their IT systems to strategic and operational business changes and to enhance interoperability between banks. To achieve this, BIAN seeks to accelerate the adoption of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in the banking industry, fostering easier and more cost effective integration of SOA for financial institutions.

Leveraging existing technology standards and specifications, BIAN will create a comprehensive framework of business-focused semantic services for banking. The framework will provide a model that institutions can use to rapidly integrate best of breed SOA components into highly functional and flexible applications, providing a cost effective way to migrate from today's legacy systems to the more agile, SOA-based next-generation banking platforms.

"CGI is pleased to be a member of BIAN," said Jame Cofran, Senior Vice-President, Global Banking & Financial Markets at CGI. "By contributing our expertise in building enterprise-wide SOA banking applications, CGI will join with other BIAN members in defining a standard framework for the next generation of SOA solutions. As a result, the industry can move towards a more flexible and responsive business platform."

BIAN was created in the spring of 2008, as a successor of SAP's Industry Value Network for Banks (IVN) originally created in 2005, and now operates as an independent non-profit organization. BIAN will soon be publishing first work products including SOA Building Blocks, Architecture Foundation and Methodologies, a banking specific Service Landscape and services from different areas like Sales and Services, Operations and Execution and Analytics.