Dump your IBM mainframe if you want to halve maintenance costs is the New Year message from HFC Bank Plc, which recently embarked on a UKP15m Project90 mission to replace its 4381 mainframe with no fewer than 190 IBM AS/400s. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Household International, Chicago, HFC arrived in the UK in 1973, and gained full Bank status earlier this year. It now claims 375,000 personal accounts and has 173 armchair-and-scatter-rug branches in towns throughout the UK. According to HFC Project90 executive John Hogan, the technological revamp will save the company around UKP400,000 per year in hardware maintenance alone, assuming that the company continued to tread the IBM-prescribed upgrade path. Deemed equally important, however, in the age of the high street banking battle, are the commercial gains. The new mid-range machines – a mixture of B60s, B20s and B10s – will be networked together with 1,600 Model 502 PS/2s to put a PC on every desk, and provide the distributed hardware base for HFC’s new customer-driven banking plans. These, in turn, revolve around a UKP500,000 software package called the Comprehensive Banking System. Originally owned by financial software developers CBS Newtrend, the system was designed as an international banking product to run on the IBM System/34, /36 and /38. It was then acquired, together with CBS Newstrend’s assets, by Citicorp’s Citicorp Information Resources subsidiary in 1987, and is now installed in 50 US and 20 international locations. Key feature of the software is the Common File module, a central database that controls all options and variables, and integrates on a real-time, on-line basis with separate Proof of Deposit, General Ledger, Time, Loan, and Transaction subsystems. Citicorp’s Steve Drolshagen claims that the software will enable HFC to gain instant access to up-to-the minute information, maximise income from its customer base, reduce operating costs, and create new products faster. From the customer perspective, Drolshagen claims a range of benefits, including an informed, friendly and identical service from every branch, and, once initial details have been entered into the system, the virtual eradication of form filling. Hogan claims that Project90 will be up and running by the end of 1991, and calculates that, if profits rise at the projected rate and the company meets its mid-1990s target of 1m customers, the scheme will have paid for itself within five and a half years. For its part, Citicorp will use HFC as an anglicisation showcase and a UK product launching pad; Drolshagen estimates that some 50% of all future CBS sales will be generated in the UK market.
