Today Bian, the Banking Industry Architecture Network, welcomes four new members from across the globe to their community, including the group's first French bank, Société Générale, leading Asian financial services group DBS, Allshare, a leading Dutch provider of secure banking solutions and EVRY, the largest IT company in Norway.
This brings the total BIAN community to 42 members: 19 banks, 22 technology providers and service integrators, and one academic partner, with a footprint in Asia, Europe, the U.S., Africa, Australia and the Nordics.
By joining BIAN, Société Générale, DBS, EVRY and Allshare will have the chance to work together with banks and IT providers from around the world, shaping the future of banking services technology. Not only will they benefit from the long-term goal of reducing IT development and integration costs, but also from connecting with the top IT architects in financial services.
These members join BIAN at a crucial time in the group's development. January this year saw the community publish Service Landscape 2.0 (SL 2.0), a framework for banking system building blocks, designed to map out a bank's IT infrastructure. The community is already working hard on finalising the next release of the Service Landscape (version 2.5), expected at the end of August 2013, which will feature 100 described service domains.
In further group developments, BIAN has also announced the introduction of an additional membership category for central and federal banks, opening up BIAN membership to another sector of the banking industry.
Hans Tesselaar, executive director of BIAN commented: "The past twelve months have been incredibly important ones in BIAN's history - not only have we grown substantially, from just 31 members in July 2012 to 42 members now, but we have also made significant steps in extending our global reach. As a community we look forward to reaping the benefits of our new members' diverse knowledge of this space, in order to better shape our final Service Landscape; we look forward to sharing the complete SL 3.0 in Q1 of 2014."
"The past months have also seen BIAN working closely with the Commission on the Structure of Dutch Banks as the Commission has sought to explore the benefits of an E Enterprise Architecture in ensuring the stability of the Dutch banking sector. We are delighted that the BIAN Service Landscape has been identified by the commission as a key force in the promotion of Enterprise Architecture in the banking sector."