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2007 FST AWARDS SHORTLIST:

Best use of IT in retail banking

Alliance & Leicester - Account Switching Project
Working in conjunction with data capture specialists, Digital Vision, the Alliance & Leicester has deployed an automated account switching solution to increase efficiency and boost customer service, while also providing the capacity needed to cope with increasing customer numbers.

Deutsche Bank - eBranch platform
eBranch makes banking secure and available anytime anywhere, by using a Citrix Terminal Server Technology-based platform on which Deutsche Bank runs its retail banking business. The platform improves customer service and simplifies the future expansion of the European retail branch network.

RBS - Group Enterprise Platform
The primary aim of the Group Enterprise Platform (GEP) is the replacement of the retail branch infrastructure at RBS, NatWest and other group-wide facilities, with a common single platform that can support future business needs, enhance customer service, ensure efficient operations and enable further income generation.

Nationwide Building Society
The Automated Lights Out Virtual Environment (ALiVE) project uses Enigmatec technology to provide an automated systems architecture for Windows servers that meets organisational needs for development, production and corporate systems, while increasing flexibility, growth potential and business continuity.

Market Harborough Building Society
The Society has developed a new customer service platform based upon Rubicon’s Accelerator CRM solution. The platform is the entry point to all other core banking systems providing a single view of customer actions, increasing sales opportunities by providing prompts and scripts at the branch, online or on the phone, while also automating workflow processes and ensuring compliance with regulatory initiatives such as ‘Know Your Customer’ and ‘Treating Customers Fairly’.

RBS - Retail Diary
The Retail Diary system, installed across RBS and NatWest branches and at call centres, has transformed the booking and management of customer appointments, enhancing customer satisfaction increasing sales conversions and providing reliable management information.

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Best use of IT in wholesale and investment banking
ABN Amro
ABN Amro’s Macro Exotics Trading department has introduced a grid to take advantage of a distributed computing platform. DataSynapse’s GridServer product has enabled process-intensive pricing and batch reporting applications to be packaged, virtualized and executed across a heterogeneous network of resources giving improved performance and manageability.

db – Direct Internet
The db-direct internet global electronic banking system provides a single, multi-lingual platform for corporates and financial institutions to access Deutsche Bank’s cash management, FX, trade finance, and domestic custody services from anywhere in the world via the internet.

Daiwa Securities SMBC Europe
One of the leading Japanese investment banks in London is using GoldenSource’s Connections technology to establish links to Bloomberg and Telekurs for securities descriptions, price and corporate actions data. The solution also integrates with existing feeds and creates a hierarchical system with preferred data feeds for different asset classes.

Credit Suisse
Credit Suisse’s Prime Services IT team has developed an interactive front-to-back platform featuring cross-product capabilities, including accounting, risk, reporting and other services, to support its prime brokerage, structured finance, securities and managed lending business lines.

Lloyds TSB – 10 Gresham Street
In August 2006, Lloyds TSB Financial Markets, part of the Corporate Markets division, moved its trading floor into a new building at 10 Gresham Street in the City of London. The state-of-the-art new floor uses HP’s Blade Workstation solution to declutter traders desks and centralize the datacentre. In addition, HP’s Multifunction technology has integrated all copying, scanning, emailing and faxing, reducing running costs.

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Best use of IT in insurance
Aspen Re
The Aspen Group’s Catastrophe Risk Management (CRM) team has introduced a web-based platform to automate processes, better manage its exposure to risk, and cope with increasing business volumes.

Berkeley Alexander
The wholesale insurance broker’s Business Assistance Matrix is intended to create a new development system to change the way business software is written and reduce the development time for small IT projects involving new insurance products.

Bluecycle
The company run vehicle salvage auctions online for insurance industry clients, such as Norwich Union. Their new internet auction site beats returns from traditional ‘yard sales’ by a claimed 15 per cent and integrates with insurers internal claims handling systems, enhancing efficiency.

Crawford & Company
The loss adjusting firm’s new Delta application runs on a tablet PC. The software moves the resources of the back office into the hands of the firm’s loss adjuster on site, improving turnaround times.

OutRight UK
OutRight’s OperaFlo paperless system means all documents are scanned on arrival in the post room, which removes the possibility of mislaid paperwork and creates a clear audit trial. The paperless office also incorporates real-time management information, dashboards and call technology, enabling better customer service and inbound or outbound calls to be prioritised depending on call volumes.

RBS Insurance – Tracker
Tracker is a telematics company that tracks vehicles, often stolen vehicles, being sought by police. Acquired by RBS in 2005 the Group had to integrate the company’s systems into its wider organisation, providing a ‘value-add’ to insurance sales. The integration project has enforced group-wide security standards, disaster recovery and access protection.

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Best use of business to business ecommerce
Black Horse Motor Finance
Part of the Asset Finance Division of Lloyds TSB, Black Horse has been a specialist in car finance for over 50 years. Its LetsUConnect internet-based service is revolutionising the way it works with dealers, introducing self-service, more efficient streamlined processes and enhanced fraud protection.

Canada Life Group Insurance
The Canada Life Automated Self Service (CLASS) web portal is designed to help intermediaries produce their own group risk quotations online and to provide them with easier access to more documentation and management information, allowing them to ultimately offer end clients in the income protection, life assurance and critical illness space with a better, more efficient service.

db – eBills
eBills is the global Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) product offered by Deutsche Bank’s global cash management business. It uses the internet to enable corporate clients to deliver or receive cross-border electronic invoices between trading partners for online processing or payment, enhancing efficiency, monitoring capabilities and the management of working capital.

Dresdner Kleinwort – CRIS suite
The Capital Raising & Investor Solutions (CRIS) suite offers Dresdner’s clients’ one interface with the bank, providing integrated access to all necessary platforms and functionality which may be required when executing capital markets business. The unified platform can offer access to research, analysis, execution or settlement information, as required.

Morley Fund Management
Morley Fund Management has assets worth £156.7 billion under investment and employs 670 staff. It needed to improve the way it communicated internally and externally with clients so installed a Stellent Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system to run all its websites on a single platform, eliminating task and content duplication.

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Anti-fraud strategy of the Year
Abbey
Abbey has added the Automated Alert Investigation (AAI) module and Advanced Peer Group Analysis (APG) module to NetEconomy’s Erase Compliance Manager to filter out false positives automatically, reduce manual interventions and identify deviations in customer behaviour, subsequently flagging alerts. The project has enhanced Abbey’s adherence to the Anti-Money Laundering guidelines.

Barclays Bank
Barclays has enhanced its existing transaction profiling capabilities by integrating a system run by RSA Cyota, which collects and stores internet session data on customer usage to fight phishing and fraud. The bank has also distributed free F-Secure anti-virus software to fight Trojans and SMS texts to alert customers when payments have been made, as part of its eBanking Fraud Defence programme.

RBS Group – Hunter project
The Hunter fraud protection solution, developed with MCL, is designed to efficiently and effectively combat fraud across all areas of RBS Group’s business.

Anti-fraud strategy of the year Sponsored by

Compliance project of the Year
M&S Money
Part of HSBC, M&S Money, is meeting the compliance deadline for Basel II through an enterprise-wide data quality initiative supported by Informatica technology.

RBS – Basel programme
RBS’s Basel II programme has ensured the bank complies with the new capital adequacy regulations. The bank has upgraded its credit risk data feeds from divisional systems to an improved group-wide credit risk repository system, introduced a new reporting and analysis centre, reconciliation tool and enhanced data quality to gain operational benefits.

DekaBank
Deka required a flexible system to meet the legal requirements of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) rules. The bank has used Ilog technology to ensure compliance and to enhance its general reporting capabilities for institutional investors.

RBS – PARIS project
On 6 April 2006, the so-called A-Day, new simplified revenue and customs regulations came into effect in the UK, changing how pensions are taxed and creating a universal regime to replace eight separate frameworks. RBS’s Pensions Administration Rationalisation Information System (PARIS) is designed to ensure compliance with the new regime catering for 250,000 internal pension recipients and replaces three separate platforms for the NatWest, RBS, and Ulster Bank divisions with one unified platform.

Newcastle Building Society – ISO 27001 accreditation
NBS has complied with the ISO 27001 security standard covering all of its own internal activities and also all the group companies involved in providing third-party services, a £6 billion industry for the Society. Newcastle Building Society is the first society to gain ISO 27001 accreditation.

Abbey
Abbey has added the Automated Alert Investigation (AAI) module and Advanced Peer Group Analysis (APG) module to NetEconomy’s Erase Compliance Manager to filter out false positives automatically, reduce manual interventions and identify deviations in customer behaviour, subsequently flagging alerts. The project has enhanced Abbey’s adherence to the Anti-Money Laundering guidelines.

RBS – ESM project
The Enterprise Security Monitoring (ESM) project is intended to enhance and expand RBS’s network security capabilities and thus better manage risks, assess vulnerabilities and report compliance across the group’s server estate.

Dresdner Kleinwort – SOX / Spreadsheet management project
Dresdner Kleinwort, the investment bank of Dresdner Bank AG, has turned to ClusterSeven to help manage its spreadsheets, initially in the product control and finance departments, in order to reduce operational risks and comply with ongoing governmental mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).

Compliance project of the year Sponsored by

Systems integration project of the Year
Advantage Finance
Advantage Finance traditionally underwrote car loans using a largely manual process and a consumer credit check but to cope with a planned increase in volumes they’ve integrated Experian’s E-Series credit reference product into a redesigned website, reducing manual processing and unnecessary duplication.

Aviva
Formerly Norwich Union, Aviva is the largest insurance services provider in the UK. It acquired the RAC to enable the company to capture the entire driving lifecycle from financing through to insurance and breakdown cover. Cable & Wireless has overseen the integration of RAC’s telecommunication and network infrastructure into Aviva’s systems.

Britannia Building Society
Britannia’s ‘2gether Programme’ integrated the 97-site branch network resulting from the Bristol & West acquisition into its operations.

Deutsche Bank – eBranch platform
eBranch makes banking secure and available anytime anywhere, by using a Citrix Terminal Server Technology-based platform on which Deutsche Bank runs its retail banking business. The platform improves customer service and simplifies the future expansion of the European retail branch network.

RBS – Ulster Bank/First Active migration
In October 2006 Ulster Bank and First Active data and systems were migrated on to an enhanced RBS Group core platform and their processes and products aligned with common group processes, delivering cost savings and giving full access to the functionally rich RBS platform.

Systems integration project of the year Sponsored by

Networking/cabling project of the Year
BGC
BGC relocated its headquarters to 1 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, where it has implemented a new £1.7 million Systimax cabling solution, installed by Bailey Teswaine.

Credit Suisse - Slough Data Centre
The Credit Suisse Slough Data Centre (SDC) opened for business on 1 November 2006 and sets a new group-wide global standard for equipment cabinets, patching frames and structured cabling.

Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets
Lloyd TSB’s wholesale trading division recently moved to a new flagship headquarters at 10 Gresham Street in London to accommodate its 1100-strong corporate Markets team. The Norman Foster designed building uses a £1 million cabling infrastructure chosen by contractor PTC Systems and used the pre-terminated, pre-tested RapidNet solution from HellermannTyton to complete the project in just six months.

RBS – Network Management
Working in collaboration with IBM Global Services, Entuity and Cisco, RBS has launched the Network Management Deployment project to migrate the group to a best of breed, single scalable network management platform, enhancing visibility, reliability and scalability.

Deutsche Bank – Strategic CRM Outsourcing project
Deutsche Bank’s Client First initiative is designed to integrate the large sales forces from Global Corporate Finance and Global Investment Banking and give senior management a window into their client relationships with big multinational companies.

RBS – Retail Clearing
The Royal Bank of Scotland Group’s cheque and clearing operations are handled by Electronic Data Systems (EDS). The 10-year outsourcing contract runs until 2011 and included the integration of NatWest’s cheque and clearing operation following its acquisition in 2000. EDS now processes over 4 million vouchers and £5 billion a day. During the past year, EDS has identified and actioned 280 change requests to improve business processes.

Rowanmoor Pensions
Rowanmoor Pensions is using the Online Desktop from ADS Portal, a subscription-based computing infrastructure, to enable its users to access their desktops from any device, over any connection.

Best straight through processing deployment
Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank – Pandora project
Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank selected Accenture to help implement an image and workflow solution from FileNet to manage all of its front and back office processing, reducing paper, manual processes and duplication.

BNP Paribas Securities Services
BNP Paribas Securities Services has created a Global STP platform powered by CheckFree.

Credit Suisse – CSAR platform
The Cash Securities Architecture Re-engineering (CSAR) platform has doubled Credit Suisse’s settlement capacity revolutionising its post-trade processing and enhancing its service to dealers and clients by increasing automation and efficiency.

EMXCo
The EMX electronic message system helps to automate the purchase, sale, valuation and settlement of unitised funds by making communicating easier, faster and more accurate between product providers and intermediaries. In 2006, the system handled 13.3 million billable messages worth billions of funds.

Intrinsic Financial Services
Intrinsic Financial Services started trading on 1 March 2006 as a new multi-tie distribution network operating in the retail financial services industry. It advises on and sells a wide range of products to consumers from UK insurers and banks, using a ‘Point of Sale’ connected trading platform with STP capabilities.

Voca
Voca has replaced its mainframe with a new payments engine that can handle 12,000 transactions a second using STP to speed up the payments cycle. The five-year project has required 40 separate IT development programmes and the new engine is ready for the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and the UK’s Faster Payments initiative.

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Best business continuity implementation
RBS – Workplace Recovery Strategy
The UK Workplace Recovery Strategy has delivered two 1300 seat recovery sites in the Midland ‘spine’ region of the UK. The new sites provide dedicated disaster recovery facilities to over 100 different business units and 10,000 staff in case they cannot reach their normal offices in the event of a disaster.

Nationwide Building Society
The Automated Lights Out Virtual Environment (ALiVE) project uses Enigmatec technology to provide an automated systems architecture for Windows servers that meets organisational needs for development, production and corporate systems, while increasing flexibility, growth potential and business continuity.

Goodman Jones
Chartered Accountants, Goodman Jones, implemented three applications modules from Neverfail in order to protect its core business critical applications. Each application, for instance email, is hosted across two servers, with the primary server located in the company’s data centre. The secondary server is situated in a remote hosting centre in London’s Docklands and connected via a WAN. A Data Rollback module ensures systems can be restored.

RBS – Infrastructure projects
The Server and Storage Consolidation programme at RBS has delivered centralised data storage facilities enabling assured disaster recovery for the Group’s Windows infrastructure. It has also consolidated RBS’s PC estate, ensured a service availability of 99.99 per cent and improved running costs and flexibility.

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Best use of CRM technology
Barclays Bank
Barclays is using Transversal’s Sales Engine to create targeted advertising for customers using its online ‘Ask a Question’ function. The aim is to increase cross-promotion and grow online sales by understanding and targeting customers in a more timely and effective manner.

Deutsche Bank – Strategic CRM Outsourcing project
Deutsche Bank’s Client First initiative is designed to integrate the large sales forces from Global Corporate Finance and Global Investment Banking and give senior management a window into their client relationships with big multinational companies.

Dresdner Kleinwort – PRISM project
During 2006, Dresdner integrated the Corporate Bank business into the investment bank, adding a further 1900 clients and employees across Germany. The company has subsequently developed an open architecture single view CRM platform.

IFDS
International Financial Data Services provides outsourced customer services management to 23 of the UK’s leading asset management companies, accounting for over £3.5 billion of investments per annum and catering for over 5 million individual unit holders in total. IFDS has installed Kana IQ to develop a central information repository to increase employee and client knowledge and satisfaction, improve operational efficiency and reduce costs.

ING Investment Management
ING IM Europe needed to provide its client service teams with easy access to up-to-date, relevant customer information but data held at the European HQ in Holland couldn’t be accessed from any of its 12 other European offices. Installing a Saratoga CRM system has rectified this enabling data to be shared across borders, on various platforms, while still complying with national laws.

Market Harborough Building Society
The Society has developed a new customer service platform based upon Rubicon’s Accelerator CRM solution. The platform is the entry point to all other core banking systems providing a single view of customer actions, increasing sales opportunities by providing prompts and scripts at the branch, online or on the phone, while also automating workflow processes and ensuring compliance with regulatory initiatives such as ‘Know Your Customer’ and ‘Treating Customers Fairly’.

IT team of the Year
Deutsche Bank – CoSMOS project
The Common System for Multi-Channel Online Services (CoSMOS) platform offers a holistic view on all assets and liabilities of a Deutsche Bank customer independent of the access channel (internet, branch or customer care centre). The service orientated architecture has been rolled out by an in-house team in the private and business client domain and latterly to a brokerage and advisory platform for closed end funds. It has increased efficiency, flexibility and standardisation.

Newcastle Building Society
The 75-person IT Group at Newcastle Building Society has had a particularly busy year and believes it deserves recognition for the following projects, amongst others: Migration of core applications to the Microsoft.NET platform; implementing an intrusion detection system; gaining the ISO 27001 security accreditation; merging another building society; automating an internet account opening process; and installing enhanced archive management and operational management systems. A number of third party service provision projects have also been undertaken.

RBS – IT Operations: SLX team
IT Workplace Services (including the Service Line Express team) at RBS were forced to rethink the way they delivered their helpdesk for a much larger customer base following the acquisitions of NatWest, Lombard, Direct Line, Ulster Bank and other purchases. Internal customers demanded a faster better service with standardised forms and integrated procedures so a self-help portal has been developed by the SLX team.

Standard Life Investments
The Chief Technology Office was created in 2006 with the objective of bringing together business plans, processes, change management and IT support so that business goals and technology were more closely aligned. The CTO has generated more than £2 million in savings by identifying more efficient processes, introduced a software development team,
IT governance and strategy team and a centralised testing procedure, all the while handling sizeable IT programmes to enable demutualization.

Voca
Voca has replaced its mainframe with a new payments engine that can handle 12,000 transactions a second using STP to speed up the payments cycle. The five-year project has required 40 separate IT development programmes and the new engine is ready for the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and the UK’s Faster Payments initiative. The in-house IT team maintained a live operation throughout the migration process, managed the multiple stakeholders in Voca, and as part of the technology refresh successfully switched 100,000 UK businesses on to the new Bacstel-IP system, which handles the majority of salary payments in the UK.

Overall winner
The winner will be announced on the night.

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