Swiss Regional Banks Award Massive IT Deal to New Provider

No less than 25 Swiss regional banks together will restructure their IT and award a large chunk of the business to a new provider.

Swiss banking is in the middle of a historic restructuring process – with regional banks affected as much as others. Fifteen Clientis banks and 10 further institutes have now decided to entrust a large part of their IT to a different company as they undertake a fundamental restructuring of their information technology, according to research by finews.ch confirmed by a Clientis manager.

The companies involved will inform about the new deal this Friday morning. It will come into force in 2018.

The 25 financial-services institutes have a combined balance sheet of 19 billion Swiss francs and will use the data-processing center and application management of Inventx, a company based in Chur. Inventx has 140 IT experts and is specialized in the banking business. The new deal is worth about 120 million Swiss francs.

Swisscom Losing Out

Losing out on the deal is Swisscom, Switzerland's biggest telecommunications company, which so far was providing the services to the banks. Swisscom will however continue to provide services to 800 work stations at the 25 banks, with WAN- and LAN-networks as well as the processing of payment transactions and securities' administration.

The new infrastructure provided by Inventx will come into use at the start of 2018. The partners will start working on a transitional project with immediate effect. The core banking system used by all the involved partner banks provided by Finnova isn't affected by the new deal. The banks expect substantially lower IT costs and an increase in flexibility.

The 15 Clientis banks are: