Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. says it is finding new uses for a risk analysis system it developed using the e-Work business-process management software from Metastorm Inc.
The customer information file (CIF) system, in use since October 2003 at 38 Sumitomo branches throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States, is intended mainly to reduce the Tokyo company's risk-based capital reserves through better evaluation of corporate-customer data gleaned from its multinational computer network.
The system was developed so that Sumitomo could comply with the Basel II global capital standards to take effect in 2008, but the company is now using the Metastorm software to standardize other processes, such as procedures for opening new accounts.
After licensing the e-Work software from Metastorm, of Columbia, Md., in June 2003, Sumitomo used it to build the CIF application, starting with a pilot test at two corporate branches, in New York and London. The CIF program feeds the relevant client information from the bank's various deposit, loan, and trade finance applications.
A number of software applications Sumitomo had developed since the 1970s had left it with "a lot of spaghetti code" that made data integration difficult, said Rise Zaiser, a vice president of information systems for Sumitomo, the world's fourth-largest bank.
"You have one customer who is doing business all around the world," she said. "You have to be able to amalgamate the risk, so that when you go into the database for customer A, everything about customer A comes up."
