After only ten months of project work, the oldest genuine private bank in the Zurich area, Rahn & Bodmer Banquiers, successfully replaced its banking systems with the Avaloq Banking System. Rahn & Bodmer offer their clients a very personal and custom tailored service. Continuity and stability are the cornerstones of the bank’s business. An optimised Back Office and IT structure create the ideal environment for the partners and their employees to devote a maximum of their time to the individual needs of their customers. Since the 1970s, Rahn & Bodmer have used various IT systems, which were permanently adapted and enhanced. Nevertheless, it became apparent that they needed to introduce a new, state-of-the-art system. For this reason the partners decided to replace their old IT-platform with the Avaloq Banking System by the beginning of the year 2004.
The decision which software and which implementation partner they should use was strongly dependent on whether they could find a suitable reference bank. As a certified Avaloq partner, Comit has already had some prior experience in the system parameterisation of the Avaloq reference bank. This made it possible for Rahn & Bodmer to assess in advance whether the Avaloq Banking System would match their specific needs.
A Standard Software Package of Surplus Value
The Avaloq Banking System enabled Rahn & Bodmer to consolidate their existing application landscape and the new core banking system, while the Avaloq Open Interface assured an easy integration of their peripheral systems. The investment in a core banking system simplified the company’s application landscape considerably and thus helped them to achieve and maintain a competitive cost structure.
Rahn & Bodmer are a securities trading partner of the Swiss RBA banks and several others banks, for which they perform transactions on stock exchanges and derivative exchanges in Switzerland and abroad. One of the major requirements of the project was to establish an electronic connection of these banks with national and international trading places by means of a standardised interface. The RBA banks now have the possibility to transmit all their orders and transactions electronically to the Avaloq Banking System at Rahn & Bodmer’s, where they will be executed on the market. Additionally, the Avaloq Client allows the banks and the external asset managers to keep an eye on the current status of their orders, to enter new orders and to modify them if necessary. Furthermore, Rahn & Bodmer are going to take over the trading section of Bank Linth, which is also a member of the Avaloq Business Bus, an initiative of Avaloq with the intention to provide a framework with a standardised infrastructure for business cooperation.
Our Recipe for Success: Reference Parameterisation and Implementation Partners
On 5 January 2004 , Rahn & Bodmer Banquiers and their 180 employees went live with the Avaloq Banking System. To guarantee a successful implementation of the ambitious project plan and to minimise the project’s risks, Avaloq applied its Best-Practice-Methodology. An anonymised data base derived from the Avaloq Community served as the foundations for the parameterisation of the standard solution for Rahn & Bodmer. Based on this reference parameterisation (existing application), Avaloq implemented the specific requirements of the bank. A project team consisting of Rahn & Bodmer, Comit and Avaloq employees made sure that the project was successful. The transition from the old to the new system was made during running operations. Jürg Rebsamen, one of the partners of Comit, says: “It has been the first time that we applied the reference parameterisation method – and it proved a success. The time required for initialisation and analysis could be reduced considerably, and the entire implementation phase was shortened significantly because less time for parameterisation was needed. Using a reference parameterisation as a starting point makes the implementation of a core banking system more calculable and allows to make a reliable schedule and estimate of costs.” As a result, Rahn & Bodmer’s cost objective for the project was not exceeded.
Dr. Christian Rahn, partner of Rahn & Bodmer, comments: “The project was completed according to our plans: from the very beginning, all the objectives have been achieved. Thanks to the streamlining and the early migration of our customer and securities data, we were able to provide a high-quality database, which was one of the main steps towards a successful integration of the system into our bank’s operating process. Today we have a platform which offers an optimal support of our business activity.”
Avaloq Community Leverage
The necessary know-how had been transferred to the partners and employees of Rahn & Bodmer already before the implementation project was started. Hence, shortly after the Avaloq Banking System had been introduced, the bank was able to operate and maintain the system independently by using their own organisational and IT resources.
Today, Rahn & Bodmer actively support the implementation process in other banks by offering their parameterisation as a reference in the Avaloq Community. That way, standardised software has become part of a co-operational model which goes beyond the boundaries defined by the sole application of software.
Zurich , Mai 2004
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