Rethinking the Core at Taishin International Bank: A Case Study

As their legacy mainframes become increasingly unable to respond to the demands put upon them by the modern banking environment, more banks are contemplating the move to a more flexible architecture. But few banks have actually done so. A new case study from Celent, , describes the core system replacement project at Taishin International Bank (TIB), by some measures the most successful of Taiwan's new generation of banks established in the early 1990s. With this project, Taishin became the first bank in Taiwan, and one of a select few in all Asia, to migrate its core systems from a mainframe environment to an open platform architecture.

Taishin enjoyed strong growth through the 1990s, putting severe strains on its legacy core system. The classic mainframe structure was rigid, making it time-consuming and risky to add new functionality. By 2001 Taishin decided the time had come to replace its core system. The bank wanted a system that could bring new products to market faster, have the scalability to keep up with the bank's aggressive planned growth, and maximize both IT and operational efficiency. Taishin selected the BANCS core system from Australian vendor Financial Network Services (FNS), running it on an open platform using Hewlett-Packard 9000 Series Superdome servers.

The case study describes Taishin's strategy in deploying an open platform-based system, the factors it considered in choosing the vendors, the project implementation itself, and lessons learned. The report concludes with an analysis of the substantial technical, operational and cost benefits realized by migrating to the new system.

"There are still few banks of significant size擁n Asia or elsewhere葉hat have taken the leap to a server-based core system," comments Neil Katkov, Senior Analyst at Celent and author of the report. "While Taishin's decision to adopt an open platform is noteworthy in its own right, even more important is the considerable strategic vision of the bank in leveraging the capabilities of the new core system to implement innovative business strategies."

The 22-page report contains 7 figures and 3 tables. A table of contents is available online.

of Celent's Retail Banking and Wholesale Banking research services can download the report electronically by clicking on the icon to the left. Non-members should contact info@celent.com for more information.