Bigbank information system voted one of world’s best

As part of the Banking Technology Awards 2017, the new NEST information system developed by Bigbank in cooperation with Icefire has been named one of the 10 best banking technology development projects in the world in the ‘Best Tech Overhaul Project’ category.

The overall winner at the awards ceremony held in London was India Post, with Allied Irish Bank also receiving praise. Other nominees in this category were Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Saxo Bank and many other well-regarded players.

“Developing the world’s most modern microservice-based banking platform was a truly unique opportunity for Icefire,” said the company’s CTO Jan Lakspere. “The key to its success was bringing Bigbank’s bold and ambitious vision together with our world-class banking technology-based know-how. We built the whole thing from scratch, using cutting-edge technology and architectural options while at the same time introducing contemporary new IT processes and principles of team-building.”

Bigbank CEO Sven Raba says that the development of the bank’s new information system was primarily needed in order to improve the customer experience and to achieve future growth. “In addition to our growth plans, NEST ensures that all of the solutions we offer are in line with the latest regulatory and reporting requirements,” he explained. “We’ve brought together all of our main information and banking technology solutions in one modern platform, and we’re making the transition to it in stages. That process started last June and will continue until 2020. The first thing we implemented was the main volume of the core system in our Finnish subsidiary back in summer.”

Raba added that NEST was developed while looking to the future. “Our vision is to become the most widely recommended provider of digital financial services in all of the countries we already operate in, as well as those we launch operations in further down the line,” he said. “NEST has everything we need to let us do that – which is to say offer our clients the most modern and convenient banking services available.”

The gala ceremony that marked the culmination of the Banking Technology Awards 2017 took place on 13 December at the Millennium Mayfair Hotel in London. It was the 18th year in a row that the awards had been presented. The competition is one of the biggest and most influential in the world.

In addition to India Post, which was awarded the main prize for the world’s largest-scale core banking transformation project, and Allied Irish Bank, which was singled out for praise in the field of payments, the other nominees in the final of the Best Tech Overhaul Project category were Bigbank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Rabobank, Santander, Saxo Bank, Schroders and Zions Bancorporation.

For more information see https://awards.bankingtech.com.