Last updated 29th March 2001

This section concentrates on Core solutions suitable for retail banks. There are some arguments as to whether some systems should or should not be included in this section - for instance 'full function'wholesale systems that contain some retail functionality could be considered candidates. For the most part, I've chosen systems that you would want to look at of you were seeking to install or replace principally Retail functionality.

There aren't that many, suprisingly. Many large institutions continue to use leviathan batch and item-processing based systems that were developed in-house or based on packages that are long gone.

 ABS Abraxsys

A system derived from IBS-90, operating on Alpha, HP-UX and RS/6000. It has a very full specification, and does a lot more than just core systems retail (including Wholesale). Multi currency, multi branch and multi-lingual too

More information is available from the website at www.absl.com/abraxsys.htm

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 Alltel

The system previously known as Systematics. US centric, mainframe oriented, core retail banking system. Alltel can be found in Little Rock, AR, USA, or at www.alltel.com/infoserve-index.html It's a bit of a grind, but you can find information about the core retail products there. As I suspected, it's still MVS and COBOL, but still no database (it uses VSAM).

Thanks to Scott Bailey, I can now also add a link to information on Horizon, Alltel's AS400, dollar only (and I believe US only) product. This can be found at http://www.alltelfinancial.com/afs/americas/products/commbank/commbank.asp

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 ASI Insite

Here's an interesting one if you're a small/medium bank. Automated Systems Inc's "Insite" banking system is a complete (US Centric) solution for 'community' banks, based on Windows 2000. It looks well featured, you can check it out for yourself at their new website at www.insitebanking.com

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 BankVision

An AS400 based core banking system, installed internationally. BankVision have installations in Europe, Latin America and Indonesia. It was originally owned by Hogan Systems, then Jack Henry Associates, and is now privately owned.

Their web site can be found at www.bankvision.com

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 Eastpoint

A Unix based core banking system - I haven't researched it yet, so let me know if it's interesting. You can find it at www.eastpoint.com

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 Ementor Financial Systems

This is really Provida. See their entry later in this section.

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 Fiserv

See the entry on Fiserv CBS here.

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 FNS BANCS

BANCS is a core banking system developed in Australia by FNS, and deployed outside the area (I've come across it in the Middle East and Asia, and they also have an office near London). They claim 60 customers.It started life as an in-house system for a building society (State Building Society) subsequently bought by the State Bank of New South Wales, and later resold to St George Bank. St George Bank spun off FNS from the State Building Society in a management buy-out. The BANCS system was originally provisioned on NCR mainframes, I believe. (remember those? No?)

In Europe, BANCS is installed in Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Norway and Cyprus on various platforms ranging from Unix/Informix to MVS/DB2.

Platforms currently supported are IBM Mainframe, Unix and NT, and most mainstream relational databases such as Oracle, DB2, Informix, etc. BANCS is (or was) written in Microfocus COBOL, which I suspect aids it's portability substantially.

More from the FNS web site (strangely unpublicised, by the way) at www.fns.com.au

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Hogan

I started to get deja vu with this one.. www.hogan.co.uk is a property management consultancy ...www.hogan.com is a shared domain for people called Hogan.... (is there a pattern emerging here? Were core retail banking system vendors late adopters of the Internet?).

However, after a little research, all became clear. The Continuum Company bought Hogan Systems in March 1996 ... and then merged with CSC. So, effectively, Hogan is now a CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation) product, although they still call it 'Hogan' in places.

You can find CSC at www.csc.com The financial systems information (including Hogan etc) is at www.csc-fsg.com

Anyway, CSC appear to be continuing to develop Hogan, including Umbrella (for the uninitiated, Umbrella is a kind of banking systems framework). They appear to be a somewhat undecided about the use of the Hogan brand name, although its used throughout the site.

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I-flex Solutions Flexcube

Now here's an interesting newcomer. I haven't managed to talk to anyone who uses it, so if you're reading this, and you do, then please let me know.

I-Flex solutions is an Indian company, and Flexcube is aimed at retail, corporate and investment banking, with integrated delivery across ATM, PoS, Internet, Telephone and branches. Multi-currency and multi-lingual.

Their web site is at http://www.iflexsolutions.com/flexcube/index.htm You can download information if you register.

The whole Corebank story is rather like an Agatha Christie mystery, I've been unable to get definitive answers. The story goes something like this: in 1996 or thereabouts IBM started a joint development with a Danish company, FinansSystem, to develop a marketable large scale core banking product called Corebank. It was the most recent in a long line of attempts based on the FSDM initiative. (For the record, as nobody seems to recall this story, IBM developed a core product called CS90 with Westpac in Australia. When that collapsed (1990?) IBM used the residual intellectual property to start the Bluegum project in Canada, which moved back to IBM Australia and became RB2020 before the plug was pulled yet again. I am unable to determine whether RB2020 is a direct ancestor of Corebank)

Parts of the system were sold to the Halifax in the UK, and, I believe, later dropped. It was referred to in IBM web material, some of it as recently as July 1999. These references have now been deleted.

After pleas for more information on this site, I had several mails that indicated it is still, apparently being marketed, primarily in Germany. The original system, developed by FinansSystem is still being used in Denmark (except it's called Kernesystemet there) by Danish institutions.

IBM's core banking systems page, at http://houns54.clearlake.ibm.com/solutions/global/gfspub.nsf/detailcontacts/Corebanking completely ignores Corebank .. I think it's been swept under the carpet. This web page concentrates on strategic alliances with Alltel and Sanchez. (see references this page).

However, to add to the mystery, the FinansSystem website (www.finanssystem.dk) says (I quote) that "...Our biggest project and efforts are on Kerne 20-01 , which is a new Danish  release. Corebank which we are developing in conjunction with IBM, and  the Version 2 project, where maintenance is ensured and enhancements  requests are implemented to the iteration of Kernesystem which is in production  in Denmark. "

So ... is it alive as IBM Corebank, or not?

Just an observation, but in my time in the industry I've seen IBM strike and quietly drop numerous agreemements to market other people's core banking systems, inclusing quite a few people on this page. It'll be interesting to see what happens with this one.

IRIS : I am reliably informed that IBM has another retail banking system built in Spain on the same infrastructure as Corebank and with very similar functionally, with FSDM, HPS, 24-hours, large volumes etc.  IBM (apparently) do not actively market the system beacause they have CoreBank, but IRIS has been sold to a large bank in Greece. It has also now been spotted in South America.

CGI Banking Components: This has been spotted in the wild, can anyone fill me in on what it is? It sounds like a set of CGI scripts, but I'm told it was bid by IBM for a core system. Sounds like FSDM to me :-)

 Jack Henry Associates, Silverlake

I have to admit this was a new one on me. I believe it is aimed at US banks with assets of USD 0-10bn, it is part of a substantial portfolio of products that I will be researching when time permits. It runs on the IBM AS/400 platform (no surprises there, Silverlake was the internal IBM codename for the AS/400 when it was being developed) If anyone would care to let me have any comments or information on their products, I'd be grateful.

In the meantime, the website is at www.jackhenry.com

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 Kindle

Kindle at www.kindle.ie is now owned by Misys (who also own Kapiti and Midas), and is a significant player in the European, Middle Eastern and Asia Pacific marketplaces.

Kindle's "Bankmaster" product qualifies for the retail core systems category. I don't believe Kapiti Equation or Midas do (although they provide some core retail functionality, it is primarily aimed at international branches of banks that need to so some retail).

They claim 180 financial institutions in 81 countries for all Kindle products; separate numbers are not available for Bankmaster.

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 Kirchman

Kirchman has been around a long time - so long in fact (since 1968) that they claim 1,000 bank customers. Kirchman is US based and used to be known as Florida Software. Their main customer base are US community banks with assets <  USD 1bn, I believe. Their principal retail product is called Bankway, which runs on NCR & IBM platforms. (I also believe that the IBM platform involved is AS/400). I like to hear from anyone who knows more about these solutions and how they eveolved from Dimension 3000 and 4000.

Frankly very little information on the website, but if you're interested in can be found at www.kirchman.com

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 Provida

Provida is now called Ementor Financial Systems after an October 2000 restructuring, but the website remains and I suspect it will be referred to as Provida for some time to come. See the entry on Provida's ProRetail product at http://www.provida.no .ProRetail is a modular system that operates on MVS, Unix and NT platforms using a variety of databases.

Although it's not clear what modules are used by which customer, the principal customers for ProRetail noted on the site are Halifax (UK), FöreningsSparbanken, (Sweden), Kreditkassen (Norway) and St. George Bank, (Australia)

 Prologic

Prologic Ovation is a client/server core banking system of Canadian parentage, to be found at www.prologiccorp.com. It is described as 'three tier' client/server, client-transaction gateway-dbms. It appears to use SQL Server 7.0 as well, which is the first I've seen (did you know SQL Server up to 6.2 was Sybase, by the way?)

Installations in over 30 countries, North and South America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Microsoft-centric, (NT, SQL Server) so the system of choice for those with a similar technology strategy, possibly.

Good, solid, workable web site, with lots of PDF downloadable documents too.

 Sanchez

 When evaluating core retail products, the Sanchez Profile/Anyware product is well worth a look - client/server, multi currency, 24x7, multi lingual, multi bank solution. Although Sanchez is a US domiciled company, they have several overseas offices and the product is not as US-centric as some of its competitors.

The Sanchez web site contains a decent amount of information, and can be found at www.sanchez.com

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 SAP - BCA module

 SAP are not a traditional player in this marketplace, but are busy developing their BCA module.Definitely the new kid on the block, but well worth reviewing at http://www.sap.com/products/industry/banking with quite a lot of available information in the form of downloadable PDF's etc.

 Systematics

Guess what? Systematics is not at www.systematics.com, that's a PC vendor. It's not at www.systematics.co.uk either, that's an (unrelated) systems house. How about www.systematicsinc.com? That's a movable library company. That's because Systematics was bought by Alltel Information Systems Inc (a subsidiary of Alltel Corp). So see Alltel, above.They seem to have dropped the Systematics name recently. Maybe because the domain names were misleading.

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 Other, Miscellaneous and commentary

Well, come on then, who have I forgotten? Can you fill in any gaps? Do you know where I can find information on Capbank TCS and it's successors? I am reliably informed that Anacomp is now out of the core banking system business, so one (at least) of my previous questions is now answered (thanks, Mike).

How about a product called Altimira from Andersen consulting? Are there any manufacturers that I've missed? Please, please tell me! 

Many thanks to all contributors of information to this section, especially Henrik Mahlberg.