Case study

The company

Helaba, short for Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen, is a commercial bank with core regions in Hesse and Thuringia, Germany offering financial services to companies, banks, institutional investors and the public sector, both within Germany and internationally. At the same time, it is the central clearing institution and service provider for 40 percent of German savings banks. Helaba is an institution incorporated under public law. With approximately 6,300 employees and two headquarters in Frankfurt and Erfurt, the bank maintains branches in Düsseldorf and Kassel as well as offices in Berlin, Stuttgart, Munich and Muenster. On an international level, Helaba acts through branches and representative offices in Paris, London, New York, Madrid, Moscow, Shanghai, and Singapore. Frankfurter Sparkasse, the leading retail bank in the Rhine-Main region, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Helaba. The Helaba Group also comprises the online bank 1822direkt, LBS Hessen-Thüringen and WIBank. (Source: Wikipedia)

The initial situation

The core banking system at Helaba, one of the key parts of the company, has been running on an IBM Mainframe environment since 1979 and is essentially based on Adabas, Natural and Coboltechnologies. The system was continuously developed and expanded over a period of 20 years until it was more or less frozen shortly after the turn of the millennium and remained in use at this level until 2016.

As a stable backbone of Helaba it has always performed well and is currently supported by a team of 10 internal and 5 external developers. However, due to strategic considerations, the replacement of the core banking system with SAP standard software was tackled in 2016. The prevailing complexity in the system, with over 3,000 interfaces and incomplete technical and specialist documentation, was the reason why the cost of the changeover had to be put in the three-digit million range.

After only a short time, the implementation project had to be postponed to 2017 due to higher-priority regulatory project plans. At the same time, there were regulatory requirements which resulted in an acute need for action in the inventory system.

Complication and challenges

At the end of the considerations, it was clear to all those involved at Helaba that no matter where the journey with the core banking system might take us - no matter what new system is to come - there will be years of coexistence between the old and new systems. This also means that there will be a shortage of personnel and know-how that must be counteracted.

One of the most important findings was also that the step-by-step changeover to a new system, which is considered realistic, will only be possible if the existing system is simplified in terms of complexity and the over 3,000 interfaces are massively reduced or structured.

The pain points were obvious:

The Helaba project team found central support for the solution of the problem in eXplain and in cooperation with PKS.

Summary

The intensive analysis of the core banking system has raised the question of whether a modernisation and restructuring of the core banking system can also be a valid option for complete replacement. The idea would be to encapsulate functionality, make it available via web services and therefore make the overall architecture more modular, technologically, flexible and efficient.

The advantages for the customer

Tools and procedures

•  eXplain - The mastermind for IBM applications
• Software Clean-Up
• Training and Coaching