The latest signings mark a significant milestone for the network - the Commercial Bank of Qatar being BIAN’s first Middle Eastern member.

After a period of fast growth and expansion across the banking industry in the Middle East, the Commercial Bank of Qatar will now work with BIAN to build important ‘City Planning’ to avoid IT congestion, using the BIAN reference models to streamline the landscape and build a stable backdrop for future growth in the region.

Similar banking industry growth has been experienced across Asia, with new member IDRBT of India aiming to use BIAN’s framework to establish best practices across Indian banks.

Together, IDRBT, Achmea and the Commercial Bank of Qatar will work to build and promote a common enterprise architecture framework with BIAN’s 42 existing members - a framework designed to resolve universal banking interoperability issues.

The new member signing coincides with a joint whitepaper released by BIAN and The Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum today. ‘Implementing BIAN Service Domains using the IFX Business Message Specification’ explains how the BIAN and IFX standards can be mapped effectively to bank infrastructure, describing how they can be used together to improve existing systems.

The full IFX whitepaper is available for download here

Hans Tesselaar, executive director, BIAN said: “It is great to add three more key members to our growing global network. This member signing is particularly significant for BIAN, as not only are we adding IDRBT from India and Achmea from Europe, but also our first Middle Eastern member – The Commercial Bank of Qatar.

“The financial industry is changing at a rapid pace internationally. It is therefore important that BIAN works with global banks, banking software vendors and service providers to reduce IT infrastructure complexity - enabling financial institutions to adapt to this changing international landscape, respond more quickly to threats and opportunities and provide better services at lower costs.”

Harry Margaritis, Head of IT Enterprise Architecture, Commercial Bank of Qatar said:
“Commercial Bank of Qatar is an innovative organisation operating in a fast growing economy with the challenge of continuously improving its services and the digital experience of its customers.
 
“In this journey, having a technology landscape where information can be independently provided and composed, in an agile yet sustainable manner, is a prerequisite.
 
“We believe that the standardisation promoted by BIAN can drive the Bank into delivering even more groundbreaking products and services, and we are excited to be the first bank in the Middle East to join this organisation.”

Ton van der Linden, CIO, Achmea said: “Achmea has joined BIAN because we believe in the adoption of market standards for enterprise architecture in the financial industry.

“We also believe in partnerships and co-development of enterprise architecture. We aim to achieve advantages in integration, flexibility, efficiency and reduction of risk.

“This will increase the productivity of IT, which is necessary for the financial industry to deliver customer value in the digital era.”

Shri B. Sambamurthy, director, IDRBT said: “Associating with BIAN will help us to participate in the evolution of banking standards and support the conversion to industry-wide best practices for Indian Banks.”