Dutch-Belgian banking group Fortis has contracted with Swiss vendor Temenos for the development and implementation of a cross-border IT platform to support its retail banking operations in Europe.
This is the first in a series of agreements signed with Temenos for development of the cross-border platform, which will enable the bank to standardise processes across its European retail banking operations.
Temenos says the new platform will replace a variety of different applications that Fortis currently uses to support its retail operations.
Fortis will implement the system in stages, with the bank's operations in the Netherlands expected to go live at the end of 2008.
Alain Deschênes, chief information officer, Fortis, says retail banking is expanding internationally, so the bank needs a unified IT system across borders.
"This contract can be seen as a kick-off of our initiative to transform our retail operations across the seven European countries where we are already present. It will contribute to a modern core architecture that allows us to standardise our processes across borders and centrally manage more than 15 million customer accounts," says Deschênes.