This effort follows up on the Proof of Concept jointly developed by BIAN and the IFX Forum in 2013 and is a direct response to member interest in proceeding to the next logical steps from the promising results of that initiative.

The BIAN Services group will work closely with the IFX Forum's Architecture Committee and its Service Oriented Architecture Working Group, to help define changes to the architecture, framework and content necessary to support BIAN services.

"The IFX Forum and BIAN are leaders in standardization in the banking industry, and both organizations have strength and roots in Service Oriented Architecture," said Urban. "It’s no surprise, then, that we have many member companies in common, nor is it unexpected that these members have a strong desire to bring to market the fruits of efforts made in both standards. I invite any company that shares these interests to join the IFX Forum and participate in this significant new endeavor."

Specific activities the BIAN Services WG will undertake include:

Creating a more detailed mapping of the current IFX Business Message Specification to the current BIAN Service Landscape
Creating defined service interfaces - i.e., working code - in the form of IFX services that implement chosen capabilities from the BIAN Service Landscape
Defining and documenting best practices for implementing BIAN services using IFX

Additional details about the new group's activities are available on the IFX Forum website.

The group's 2015 Annual Meeting took place April 27-29 in Wakefield, Massachusetts, USA. Participants included members and guests from eight countries and five continents. At the event, member companies' representatives re-elected Director Terri Willis of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and elected Charles Washburn of FIS, both to terms expiring in 2018. The new Board then re-elected Chairman Richard DuVall of ACI Worldwide, Inc., Secretary Mark Tiggas of Wells Fargo Bank, and Treasurer Victor Dossey of Microsoft Corporation.

The IFX Business Message Specification is available at no charge at http://bms.ifxforum.org/. The Forum also hosts a free IFX Discussion Forum, where knowledgeable Forum members and other subject matter experts will answer IFX-related questions from the public.