BIDV leadership at a meeting on the go-live of Core Banking Profile

Core Banking Transformation Project of BIDV is an impressive and outstanding project with special imprints. Could you please give some overview on the project delivery and its important achievements?

Mr. Phan Thanh Hai:

First of all, BIDV would like to extend our sincere thanks to our customers and partners for your companion during the transformation. This is the greatest motivation for BIDV to successfully transform the Core Banking system from early September 2023.

The Core Banking transformation project is an important milestone and significant achievement of BIDV during the past 20 years since the last Core Banking transformation in 2003. The project has applied many special delivery approaches, with many “first” things ever.

Firstly, it must be mentioned that the project has been implemented in 30 months since the global outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, leading to a highly adaptive and flexible approach.

Never before that such a complex technology project like Core Banking was mostly carried out online, including system diagnostic workshops and URD identification. But with unwavering determination of the whole system, the project has been delivered on time, safely and with high quality, especially without any change requests that would incur additional costs for the Project.

Next thing worth mentioning is the integration of 102 applications over 1,000 days. Core Banking is the heart of a bank’s information technology system. Replacing Core Banking means “changing your heart while still maintaining your heartbeat”.

To achieve this amidst various challenges, we have refined the connections, modified mid layer and external applications to ensure seamless integration with the new Core Banking. Our contractor and application providers, staff of business departments, technical staff of the Project Management Unit and Digital Banking Development Center have made great efforts to complete a huge workload.

The most encouraging achievement is that the actual downtime of BIDV’s e-banking applications is just 16 hours, which is the shortest downtime ever among Core Banking transformation projects of banks.

As you may know, to replace core banking system, banks must temporarily stop providing services to customers for a certain number of days, usually about 3-4 days. The larger the customer base and the more satellite applications connected to Core Banking, the longer the transition time is, the longer the service downtime is. BIDV planned to go live Core Banking on the Independence Day (2 September 2023), so if the service downtime had been long, that would have greatly affected customers.  

What we were most concerned about was how to minimize service downtime for customers. That was when we thought about migrating transactional data (Delta Lake). Under this option, the existing Core SIBS and the new Core Profile Banking were operated in parallel during the transition. During two go-live days, we migrated transactional data from the existing system to the new system every day, therefore BIDV still provided services to customers during most of the transition process and minimized the impact on service provision to customers.

There are also many other imprints such as technical training, pilot and rehearsals, software development, deployment approach, etc. Finally, the successful transformation of Core Banking system demonstrates that: When we have “the superior - subordinate unanimity”, everything is possible.

Could you please share the implication of Core Banking Profile transformation towards BIDV’s operations and development in the coming time?

Mr. Phan Thanh Hai:

Back to 2003, when BIDV launched SIBS Core Banking system, this became a big event at the time, contributing to making BIDV the leading bank in Vietnam. However, amidst the Industry 4.0 and digital transformation era, banks need to quickly introduce new products and services, especially those with technological content to meet customers’ needs and maintain a competitive positioning in the market. After 20 years of operation, SIBS system had certain limitations.

I strongly believe that this Core Banking transformation will be critical to create many innovations and leapfrogs in BIDV’s operations and development, especially in providing products to customers, and mastering the system, with an open architecture that easily connects and integrates with other systems.

The Core Banking Profile system brings major and comprehensive changes to BIDV, especially in business direction, development strategy, product and service development mindset, organizational model, governance and management methods and operating procedures. The successful transformation of the Core Profile system opens a new chapter in BIDV’s development history, demonstrating the Bank’s confidence in mastering technology, innovation, improving service quality and strengthening the bank’s future position.

Thank you very much!